dir. rolf de heer
Now showing at the Academy cinema, Oxford St. Paddington

De Heer's new film bears some similarities to his previous and most popular work, Bad Boy Bubby, namely the themes of isolation, abuse and freedom. Dance Me To My Song is primarily concerned with the relationship between Madelaine, an attendant carer, and Julie, a wheelchair-bound woman who Madelaine is paid to look after. The film begins by showing the contrast between the two women's lives. Julie (played by Heather Rose who also co-wrote the screenplay) is in bed, unable to get up on her own and in need of help while Madelaine (Joey Kennedy) reluctantly gets herself ready for the day, stopping to study herself in the mirror. One quickly realises Madelaine resents looking after Julie when she finally arrives at Julies house, gets her out of bed and under a cold shower, crudely reminding her that: "If it wasn't for people like me, you'd be back in a home." This is the dilemma that Julie faces. The only alternative to Madelaine's abuse is to be sent to a place where she would have even less privacy. There's a shortage of homecare attendants which means having Madelaine sacked is not an option. It is a bleak picture until one day Julie manages to coax a passer-by, Eddie (John Brumpton), inside her house and from there a friendship develops.

The film has a low budget feel - much of the film set within the walls of Julies house creating a feeling of claustrophobia to the extent that one shares Julie's excitement and relief when Eddie suggests that they go to the milkbar for an icecream. Dance Me To My Song begins honestly enough and is a success to a degree in that Julie is given a voice and one feels a sense of empathy for that character, but the film at times deteriorates into something else. The low-budget and Heer's intimate direction conveys a sense of realism, but not quite as convincingly as the social criticism of Ken Loach's films. There is a hint of exploitation towards the end where the film becomes dangerously similar to an American-style contrived thriller - the seat-gripping kind where the audience is supposed to be wondering if the star will be murdered by the psychopath.

The steering away from a social realist style was probably an attempt to shift the emphasis away from Julie's disability. Kennedy has said that this is not a film about cerebral palsy, but "about people" and De Heer readily admits that this is a feelgood film. But the film would have had far greater impact without resorting to dramatic effects purely for entertainment's sake, which only served to cheapen the fact that the makers of this film have succceeded in giving Julie an identity beyond her disability. The audience is drawn in because she's intelligent but also human enough to get pissed off with her mates. The fact that Madelaine is in some ways just as vulnerable, trapped and dependent as Julie is an interesting idea that could have been developed further. Instead the film falls back on over the top melodrama that we've seen too often in popular movies geared towards an audience in need of escape.

peter long
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