Ballet Shoes
You start watching the film, aware of the awaiting entrance of one Emma Watson and your anticipation can’t help but to grow as the seconds pass before you. When she does appear you are not left disappointed; you’ve expected her performance, and her acting, to be what it always is – beyond excellence. Yet, you are surprised, because you have never seen her quite like this. Normally she has Daniel Radcliffe, desperately trying to steal the attention away from her, and Rupert Grint, succeeding in his attempt of attracting her attention. Now you see that she doesn’t really need the chemistry that she so admirably shares with Grint, because she manages to steal the attention away from the rest of the cast by herself. She has now proven that she’s been in her right element all along. Emma Watson was born to act, and so far she has yet to disappoint. Her eyes set her apart from the rest – suddenly it’s no longer an act, suddenly it all seems real. But whilst Emma Watson is the highlight of this film the rest should not go unnoticed.
The tale itself is very touching, not soon after the arrival of the first orphan you get a feeling of where it is heading. A film of which the core is a tale of three orphans cannot be anything else but moving, and whilst your expectations of the plots direction is on the verge of being high you find yourself quite taken aback by the sudden turning points that come your way. Pauline Fossil, the character who so desperately longs to be an actress of high standards, is the one that takes you the most my surprise. She gives you a sense of awareness, and being the eldest of the three Fossil-children she is indeed the most mature. What makes her so different from what you’d expect is the humanity she brings to the screen. When being inches from fulfilling her dream Pauline can’t help but to let her longing take the better of her. Pauline Fossil’s self obsession is what makes the character human, and Emma Watson is what made her real.
Emilia Fox, the brilliant actress portraying the Fossil’s guardian and mother figure, couldn’t have been a more perfect choice for the character of Miss Brown. There is something so tragic and desperate in her portrayal that you wonder for a second if it really is just fiction. How this woman cares for these three children, brought to her from three different places by an uncle she barely ever knew, is something that can hardly go unnoticed. What adds to the viewer’s sympathy for this character, who is not only poor by health, is her longing for a man who doesn’t seem to share her affection. A simple one-sided love story is always a brilliant choice for a side-plot; it may be easily predicted, but it always works. No one can argue with that.
It’s not that the other two Fossils, Petrova and Posy, go unnoticed, the fact of the matter is that they simply do not make as lasting impressions as the characters of Miss Brown and Pauline. The reason does not necessarily lie in the acting of the two, but may just as well be that the characters just don’t contribute as much to the main plot as the other two previously mentioned. Of course, being two of the three Fossil-children, they do have much importance but the lasting impressions are of Fox and Watson. But it can’t be left unsaid that Lucy Boynton to bring a certain charm to the character of Posy, and her bluntness does make you smile and laugh of loud during several episodes throughout the film.
The peak of the film, on the other hand, arrives just about midway through, and the one responsible for the scene of the film is, in fact, Miss Watson. Breaking down completely she’s the star of the most heartbreaking scene in the history of Ballet Shoes. One can not even imagine how brilliantly she does it; you can’t help but to fall in love with her, even if it is just for a moment. Pauline Fossil may not be what the film is really centered around, but you can’t help but to think that if it wasn’t for the actress playing her you may not have watched the film at all. If it wasn’t for Emma Watson you probably would have missed out on some top of the class acting, as well as a rather brilliant film.
