Boléro
Historical drama by Anne Fontaine (Coco Avant Chanel) about the laborious creation of what eventually became a world-famous masterpiece: composer Maurice Ravel's Boléro.
Check the English subtitled screenings of this film here.
Paris, the Roaring Twenties. Russian choreographer Ida Rubinstein chooses Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet. She wants something bold, something sensual. Well known and established, Ravel finds himself incapable of writing anything. Reliving his memories, facing his old loves and failures, the composer will give birth to his greatest success ever: the Boléro, which took him six years to complete. Originally, he himself didn’t like it, and dismissed it.
In the two decades between the First and Second World War, Maurice Ravel was considered to be France’s greatest living composer. His work melded modernism, baroque and neoclassicism, with later compositions also embracing jazz. Despite his range, Ravel remains best-known for his 1928 composition Boléro, whose conception lies at the heart of Anne Fontaine’s elegant, carefully crafted biopic.