Flashdance (Special Collector's Edition w/ Bonus CD) [Import]

The film is an image of what the 1980s were, of Pittsburgh in the 1980s, this temple of heavy industry coming to an end and starting to look for a new future, due to its industrial crisis. Yet this film has not lost any charm and meaning. The young Alex, an 18 year old girl, is the symbol of this city, an industrial worker during the day and a dancer at night, with a dream : to join the ballet company of the city. Industry producing art. Industrial work producing the dream of art. Alex is a willful young woman who follows the road of her desire, if not ambition, but keeping her ethics pure all along. Pure by looking for love and not pure pleasure. Pure by refusing any favor in her quest and longing for a victory that can be called her own because it owes nothing to anyone and any help from outside herself. Pure because she salvages her friend from becoming a gogo girl in a shady place where dancing is just some kind of dressing for enticing prostitution. Pure because she finds her energy in an old friendship with an old dancer who is encouraging her in getting started and competing for an audition that could open the door to a new artistic life. Pure because she is not soiled by all those who would like to drag her down into the mud of selling her young beauty and art to the gloating eyes of perverse and lustful males. And she can succeed because she never lets her dream die. In life the dream is the almighty sign on the road to epiphany and Alex will meet with this epiphany of hers, the one she has dreamed of for years and she can find only in the energy that comes from her mind and her body, from her unconquerable soul. This film has not aged in spite of all the changes that have occurred in our societies. The dream is the energizing force that leads the way, too often of some Cross, to transcendency.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

These movies from the 80s don t hold up very well, I remembered it fondly but when I watched it the story seemed dumb ~ but the dancing is still good , I sent it off to a friend.

Some friends and I watched this now-18-year-old flick last weekend, and all I can say is . . . what a feeling.

The plot concerns 18 year-old Alex, welder by day, dancer by night, who lives in a converted Pittsburgh warehouse loft and dreams of becoming a ballerina as her grandmother once was. (How Alex has managed to acquire exceptional dance AND blowtorch skills by her 18th birthday is never explained.)

As Alex "chases" her dream (she can't even work up the nerve to take an application to the local dance school from its frosty secretary), things happen. What happens and why is also largely unexplained, but the main sub-plot concerns the blossoming relationship between Alex and the owner of her construction company (who is perhaps twice her age but owns a Porsche). One minute Alex is shy and reluctant to date the boss; the next she's slipping off her bra while asking him if he's ever "seen" the music. On a later date, she's seductively sucking crab legs in a chic restaurant when his ex-wife (looking like some lost tsarina in her enormous fur hat) comes out of nowhere and provokes a verbal cat-fight, provoking Alex to reveal her revealing "tuxedo vest." And when Alex finds out that her man has used his influence to get her a dance audition at the school, she transforms into a wild-eyed, chain-smoking, trenchcoat-wearing hellion. (There's also a sub-plot about rescuing a friend from the "bad" nude dance club--as opposed to the good one where Alex dances--that is little more than melodramatic filler . . . well, there's a lot of filler, and still the movie barely makes 90 minutes. Not that that's really a bad thing.)

The soundtrack is engaging; some of the dancing is exhilarating (even though Jennifer Beals didn't do most of it!). However, this movie is neither a romance nor a drama: it's a long, warped music video. Taken as such, it can be fun. Enjoy for some '80's nostalgia--what a feeling indeed.