A great story and some amazing dancing are sacrificed on the altar of cheesy melodrama in Mao's Last Dancer. It's hard to believe the great Bruce Beresford ( Tender Mercies, Driving Miss Daisy ) could have watched it, let alone directed it. And no one who even typed the scripts for Shine and The Notebook could have been responsible for this screenplay, let alone the person who wrote or adapted them ( Jan Sardi ) .
This is the true-ish story of Li Cunxin ( Chi Cao ) , who was invited to spend the summer of 1981 with the Houston Ballet and decided to stay in America. In a throwback to movies of several decades ago, Bruce Greenwood plays the ballet's artistic director, Ben Stevenson, as an obviously gay man who lives alone and has absolutely no life outside of his work.
Li is obviously straight because even as a boy, every time he partners a female on stage there's another female in the audience looking jealous.
Nine years earlier Li, one of seven sons of a peasant couple, was plucked from his humble village to be trained as a dancer at the Beijing Arts Academy, along with 39 other children from all over China. They're also given a standard indoctrination in communism, including being taught that "China has the highest standard of living in the world," and capitalist nations the lowest.
When he arrives in oil-rich Houston at the height of the boom, Li is overwhelmed. He never saw such luxury, even in Beijing, and can't believe Ben has such a large house to himself. But the Chinese consul has counseled him not to trust anyone, "especially womenthey'll lead you astray."
The early part of the film goes back and forth between Houston and Li's early years in China, where he is unhappy until an old-school teacher, later prosecuted for his teachings, makes him appreciate dance and his own skills.
When the Houston delegation visits Beijing in 1980 they're disappointed to see the students, except for Li, are "more like athletes than dancers."
In Houston Li gets a break on "the biggest night on the arts calendar," but has only three hours to learn the pas de deux from Don Quixote.
About 45 minutes into the film Li meets aspiring dancer Elizabeth Mackey ( Amanda Schull ) . She may be the most important woman in his life for a time, but in the screenplay she's a device, not a person. Afraid of what will happen to his family in China if he defects, Li learns he can stay in the U.S. if he marries a citizen. He's already dating Elizabeth so she's a logical choice, but he's still concerned about his family. ( Ben has a hissy fit. )
Unable to contact his parents Li worries about them constantly. Years later Ben arranges for them to surprise him by showing up in the audience for a performance. It must have taken months to arrange and could have taken a lot of stress off Li if he'd known it was in the works, but the surprise makes for a more upbeat ( and corny ) climax.
That may be the stupidest thing in the movie but there are countless smaller things, like people working in a Washington office in what must be the middle of the night. Even original twists are presented in such a way as to look like clichés.
The ballet sequences, choreographed by Graeme Murphy, are the saving grace of Mao's Last Dancer. If only we got a two-hour recital instead of the story. Not to be shortchanged is the principal dancer, Chi Cao, who's also a decent actor, as far as the script allows. There's talk of a new film biography of Bruce Lee, and he would be a good choice for the role. They'll probably screw up that script too, but I'd pay to see Chi replicate Lee's fight choreography.
SCARCE, starring Steve Warren, was released on DVD May 31 in Australia, where it has to compete with homegrown horror favorite Wolf Creek. It's the only continent Steve hasn't been to, and now they're afraid of him, too!