Saturday, July 3, 2010

Dancing Machine (1990)

I think there are too many dancing scenes in this movie, that the thriller doesn't work. It lacks the scenes to built tensions. It doesn't have a good story to start with as well. In the middle of 70's, disco-musician Marc Cerrone wrote the story with Alain Delon in mind, but this movie was realized about 15 years later - though I hoped it had never been at all. The ending is absurd and I wished for a better explanation.

Alain Delon plays Alan Wolf [In Le samouraï, Delon's character is "a lone wolf" or "a wounded wolf"], the director of a dancing school. Once a very good dancer, Wolf's career ended after an accident, which also killed his mistress Melissa. He and his associate Chico run the classes harshly. His ex-wife, Ella, tells Inspector Eparvier (Claude Brasseur) who lives in the same apartment as her, about her suspicion that Wolf has killed 2 female students. "They died in shocking ways" - she tells Eparvier. The 3rd victim soon follows: a student who has been dismissed and dances on the street to attract's Wolf attention, and dies due to exhaustion and heart attack. The inspector begins to look into the matter seriously, especially after Ella and Chico consecutively are found dead, with Wolf in both crime scenes. Melissa's sister, Daphné, now joins the school and becomes Wolf's mistress, warned by the inspector that she is the next victim. 

Alan Wolf wears black throughout the movie, as though he is always in mourning and blames himself for Melissa's death. After Daphné came, he changes the black with red, then blue, and returns to black again after she left. I think without Alain Delon and Claude Brasseur, not many people would bother to watch this movie. If I'm not mistaken, this is their reunion after George Lautner's Les seins de glace in 1974.

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