Fase (2002) User Reviews

telling stories in dance

[edward-nye · 8/10 · 4 January 2006]

A comment on Sophie's remark that the filmmaker doesn't even use his art to 'tell us a story'. Thank god! There is a fundamental difference between telling a story in film and in dance; in film, you construct sense by cutting, by 'montage'; in dance, you positively destroy sense by montage. All the sense is in the sequence and use of space as defined by the choreographer. If you like, the choreographer has already done the montage. Hence the only way to film dance is from a single camera angle, or at least, with minimum change of angle. Of course, a director and choreographer can choose to cut the filmed version, but presumably they'd do that on the principle that the filmed version is not in the least trying to be like the live version. Both are fine, but if you want to see something akin to the original, best avoid the director's cut.

Almost magnificent, but totally thoughtless.

[sophie_lem21 · 1/10 · 1 December 2003]

Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker is a well-known Belgian modern dance choreographer. Her work is inspiring, rhythmic, exciting, incredibly synchronized without being artificial and extremely intense. It is drama at its best. I love to see her dancers perform on stage, and when you see them, you realize the many cinematic possibilities this modern dance possesses. So, what about the movie, Fase, that brings several of those dance-sequences together? It missed a great possibility to be a big artistic challenging movie. It is not even an experiment, which I would prefer to a rigid, unoriginal and tedious attempt of filming the choreography without having a clue what you are doing. The director overlooked the possibilities of regrouping the several episodes and did not even use his creativity to tell us a story. It could have been great, but it isn't! And not even the photography, done by the Belgian DOP Walter Van Den Ende (No Man's Land - 2001), could have changed that. Next time, they should be more demanding before they start shooting.