‘Boléro‘, Anne Fontaine‘s 2024 film, is a biographical film about a great composer and his most popular creation. It is, of course, about Maurice Ravel and his ‘Boléro’, one of the great hits of classical music, a work about which we learn in the credits at the end of the film that not a quarter of an hour passes without it being performed somewhere in the world. Based on the essay published in 1986 by Marcel Marnat, a French musicologist and music journalist who left us a few months ago, the film reconstructs Ravel’s life, career and experiences, focusing on the period and circumstances in which he composed the famous ‘Boléro’. I am not in a position to judge to what extent the plot described in the film corresponds to historical facts, but the story is credible and the character of the composer represents one of the possible variants of his biography, reconstructing or imagining plausible explanations for several mysteries surrounding his private life. Above all, it is a film shrouded in music and sounds.
The actual story of the creation of the famous musical work takes place in the late 1920s. Ravel is a well-known composer, but also quite a controversial and criticized one, when he receives a commission from the ballerina Ida Rubinstein for the music of a ballet for the Paris Opera. He is given complete trust and freedom (‘it should only be something with Spanish influence and should last 17 minutes’) except for a strict deadline – the premiere is announced for the autumn. The problem is that Ravel is in a crisis of inspiration and perhaps the first signs of the nervous system disease that would affect his ability to write music in the following years and kill him a decade later are showing. Episodes from his life come back to his mind, and especially memories of the women who loved and supported him. A woman called Misia also reappears, she was perhaps his only great love, a beautiful woman who loves him too, but who is now married out of convenience to a petty bourgeois who is also cheating on her. The spark of love reappears for a moment but never turns into a flame. Ravel’s life is too immersed in music and even love can only be expressed through music. ‘Boléro’ will be born and will conquer the world, even if Ravel himself does not consider it to be his best composition. However, fame was earned.
Anne Fontaine is a filmmaker for whom feminist themes are important, and ‘Boléro‘ is no exception. The figures of the women who surround Ravel are memorable, starting with his mother with her faith in her son’s genius, then Misia (played with distinction and sensitivity by Doria Tillier) and the dancer Ida Rubinstein (Jeanne Balibar) to the devoted maid (Sophie Guillemin) who always brings him the high-heeled shoes with which Ravel was adding a few centimeters to his stature and who in the film also gives him the idea of the theme hummed today by the entire planet. The only less consistent female role is that of the pianist Marguerite Long, Ravel’s advisor and musical partner. The relationship between them is unclear and not even the wonderful Emmanuelle Devos could bring it to life. Raphaël Personnaz is perfect in the role of Ravel, even managing to make us forget that he is at least 10 years younger than Ravel was in the late ’20s. ‘Boléro‘ is one of those films where sound is as important as image, and that is why I need to mention the name of sound editor Jean Goudier together with that of cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne. Together they have achieved a refined and effective combination of sound and image. The script has its lengths and the picky viewers will notice a slightly high dose of melodrama, but they are not excessive. This film charmed and moved me.