I think there could have been an interesting story about two very broken, disturbed people and how their disfunction plays out through their very weird/unhealthy sexual relationship. Its at least filmed pretty well. It looks good and the acting is okay. That's pretty much all the positives I can give this movie.
There is pretty much no attempt at character development or motivation. It just lacks purpose and feels totally devoid of any emotion. The sex scenes are not shocking because it does not seem like the two leads are mother and son, they are just two random people with almost no emotions who barely have some rather lame sex.
All that said my real issue with this movie and so many movies like it is its misuse of ballet and its depiction of the stereotypical neurotic, bulimic, crazy ballerina.
BALLET RANT INCOMING:
I have been a ballet dancer since I was in pre school and now fit dancers for their pointe shoes professionally. My first ballet related issue with this film seems rather small but happens very early in the film and told me pretty much exactly what kind of ballet movie I was about to watch.
In this early scene the main character (I don't even know her name or if she is even given a name) is seen teaching a class of young dancers. I immediately noticed that these students were wearing flat shoes and not pointe shoes. This alone is fine as they look quite young and dancers don't typically start pointe until around 10 to 12 ish. However our main character IS wearing pointe shoes. This is very weird and honestly makes no sense. Dance teachers wear dance sneakers, flat shoes, and other types of dance shoes (which she is seen wearing in every subsequent dance scene. The shoes she wears for the rest of the movie are called Grecian Teaching Shoes. They have a very low heal 1/2 inch/ 1.27 cm at most and are made of leather with a flexible sole which can be suede or leather). The only way I could see the inclusion of pointe shoes making sense was if this was a beginner pointe class and she wanted to demonstrate proper technique with her own feet. Even then that is fairly unusual and it was just a really odd choice. There was literally no reason for her to be dancing en pointe at all. I think the reason they put this scene in was so the next scene could be of her painfully taking off her pointe shoes and her messed up toes. This was very reminiscent of Black Swan, another awful ballet film. However in Black Swan it at least makes sense that she would be en pointe because she is dancing in a company. At least in that movie the eating disorder stuff and toe pain made sense for the plot. Here it just makes no sense and really the whole ballet aspect only seems to be in the movie to show how crazy, weird, obsessive, high strung, etc she is. Ballet should not have been a factor in this story at all and I found it gross how they totally misrepresented ballet just so they could have an easy, and maybe even lazy way of saying "look audience this chick is crazy".
The Red Shoes Continues to be the only movie which heavily features ballet that I enjoy. Its sad to see yet another simplistic and insulting portrayal of a ballet dancer in a movie. This stereotype of the crazy ballerina as mentioned in another review is just simply wrong. Ballet dancers are people they are individuals and have all the variations in life experience and personality you would find anywhere else in the world.
BALLET RANT OVER
Basically this movie was boring and pointless with the added insult of the whole inclusion of ballet into the story.
I do not recommend. If you want to experience ballet then go take a ballet class or see a live performance, or watch The Red Shoes.
