feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2008-01-09 06:54 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2008-01-09 06:54 pm
REVIEW: Ballet Shoes (2007)
Ballet Shoes (BBC One, Boxing Day 2007)
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1083845/
Adaptations both are and are not, risky prospects. Television companies and film studios make them because they believe that they're safe prospects, being familiar properties and so attracting an interested audience. Adapting a book also offers a touch of class to a TV or film production, more often than not. With 'Ballet Shoes', you have a widely acclaimed classic with nostalgic connotations from the viewers' childhood, and for the period in which the book is set. And yet, like I said, it's a risky proposition. The screenwriter has to translate the material to a different medium, for a different age, while they (and of course everyone else involved in the production) are putting their own stamp on readers' long-held personal view(s) of the book. Maybe influenced by their own long-held view, maybe not.
I don't know if this book's ever been adapted before, I suspect so, whether it was another TV production or for the stage, it's too popular a book not to have been. This 2007 production squared off against how I saw the book and what I'd read into it, and I found myself nitpicking.
I can accept adaptations that take liberties with the original, honest. I understand the principle that a live-action piece is a different beast to a book. But only if the application entertains me and is true to the spirit of the original (unless if I hated or disliked the original). Watching this adaptation, I got more and more worked up by the changes made, rather than going along with the story.
I sat down with prejudices, of course, I don't like Emma Watson's Hermione, and thought she was too old to play Pauline when the casting was announced, so of course I noticed that they scrubbed out nearly all the references to age, whereas in the book, 12 years old is THE (constantly-referenced)milestone. And with an actress who is practically a young woman, we lost all that. The trade-off is that Watson is also a bona fide star, and provided a meta-textual aspect to the section when Pauline becomes a star thanks to the movie she lands. But we also had Watson's acting abilities, or lack thereof, which were inevitably highlighted by Pauline's struggles.
The other two Fossils were much better. The actress who played Petrova was probably a little too old too (conversely, Mr Simpson should have been played by an older actor or an older-looking actor than Mark Warren, because the image of him hanging out with a clearly pubescent girl didn't quite achieve the father-figure dynamic of the book). Of course, in a feature like this, it wouldn't be possible to show the development in age that the book there is. I warmed to her, as one does reading the book, as, while the other two succeed, she's forced into something she's no good at. And in this version, Petrova was always the one to see Garnie at her weakest.
Maybe Posy should have been played by a younger girl too, but I forgive that easily because Lucy Boynton (producing another neat little performance as Margaret in the current adaptation of Sense and Sensibility) was spot on, nailing Posy's ruthless drive. I would have liked to have seen more of her, because Posy is probably the most entertaining character in the story.
The book is about the Fossils, and Nana is the most dominant grown-up character, but the focus of the adaptation was slightly different - the result of the pandering to its adult audience? That wasn't what I was looking for, having recently re-read the book. I didn't care for the Sylvia/Mr Simpson love story (they killed off his wife!), because it was part of the way they totally changed the dynamic of the story. Suddenly, it was all about Sylvia and the girls, and I appreciate that it's a feminist impulse to give the neglected, selfless mother figure some attention, to show her frustrations with the limitations of her life more explicitly than in the book, but the book is all about four strong female characters. The whole point is that Sylvia, the nominal guardian, is mothered by Nana after being abandoned by GUM and that the young girls in her care become the wage earners.
There were other consequences to the decision to 'sex up' what should have been a children's story. Granted, if I had never read anything beyond friendship, in the Doctors' relationship, though dur! this reading of this application is totally valid. Except the adaptation had to go that step further with a couple of clunking, expository lines, instead of trusting to two very good actresses. And as a result, there was suddenly a lot of subtext between Sylvia/Theo, particularly on Theo's side, so much so that her ending with the forgotten male admirer seemed bizarre and forced (the book isn't that much interested in Theo, other than as a vehicle to get the girls to the school).
I think my biggest grudges that it was too sentimental: giving Sylvia a love story, playing the Nutcracker music, of all things, all the time there was dancing, making Pauline's life lessons be far more cliched than about gritting her teeth and learning to work. If it had just been a little more traditional, if it had been willing to be the six o'clock teatime children's drama that was true to the spirit of the book, I would've liked it so much more. And I wouldn't have been so cross and worried about whether the new Mrs Simpson was going to end up accompanying Pauline to L.A., so that she could meet the Winters. And maybe they could have cut the silly ending - not even Petrova would choose to fly over attending Garnie's wedding.
My thoughts on the book can be found here.
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1083845/
Adaptations both are and are not, risky prospects. Television companies and film studios make them because they believe that they're safe prospects, being familiar properties and so attracting an interested audience. Adapting a book also offers a touch of class to a TV or film production, more often than not. With 'Ballet Shoes', you have a widely acclaimed classic with nostalgic connotations from the viewers' childhood, and for the period in which the book is set. And yet, like I said, it's a risky proposition. The screenwriter has to translate the material to a different medium, for a different age, while they (and of course everyone else involved in the production) are putting their own stamp on readers' long-held personal view(s) of the book. Maybe influenced by their own long-held view, maybe not.
I don't know if this book's ever been adapted before, I suspect so, whether it was another TV production or for the stage, it's too popular a book not to have been. This 2007 production squared off against how I saw the book and what I'd read into it, and I found myself nitpicking.
I can accept adaptations that take liberties with the original, honest. I understand the principle that a live-action piece is a different beast to a book. But only if the application entertains me and is true to the spirit of the original (unless if I hated or disliked the original). Watching this adaptation, I got more and more worked up by the changes made, rather than going along with the story.
I sat down with prejudices, of course, I don't like Emma Watson's Hermione, and thought she was too old to play Pauline when the casting was announced, so of course I noticed that they scrubbed out nearly all the references to age, whereas in the book, 12 years old is THE (constantly-referenced)milestone. And with an actress who is practically a young woman, we lost all that. The trade-off is that Watson is also a bona fide star, and provided a meta-textual aspect to the section when Pauline becomes a star thanks to the movie she lands. But we also had Watson's acting abilities, or lack thereof, which were inevitably highlighted by Pauline's struggles.
The other two Fossils were much better. The actress who played Petrova was probably a little too old too (conversely, Mr Simpson should have been played by an older actor or an older-looking actor than Mark Warren, because the image of him hanging out with a clearly pubescent girl didn't quite achieve the father-figure dynamic of the book). Of course, in a feature like this, it wouldn't be possible to show the development in age that the book there is. I warmed to her, as one does reading the book, as, while the other two succeed, she's forced into something she's no good at. And in this version, Petrova was always the one to see Garnie at her weakest.
Maybe Posy should have been played by a younger girl too, but I forgive that easily because Lucy Boynton (producing another neat little performance as Margaret in the current adaptation of Sense and Sensibility) was spot on, nailing Posy's ruthless drive. I would have liked to have seen more of her, because Posy is probably the most entertaining character in the story.
The book is about the Fossils, and Nana is the most dominant grown-up character, but the focus of the adaptation was slightly different - the result of the pandering to its adult audience? That wasn't what I was looking for, having recently re-read the book. I didn't care for the Sylvia/Mr Simpson love story (they killed off his wife!), because it was part of the way they totally changed the dynamic of the story. Suddenly, it was all about Sylvia and the girls, and I appreciate that it's a feminist impulse to give the neglected, selfless mother figure some attention, to show her frustrations with the limitations of her life more explicitly than in the book, but the book is all about four strong female characters. The whole point is that Sylvia, the nominal guardian, is mothered by Nana after being abandoned by GUM and that the young girls in her care become the wage earners.
There were other consequences to the decision to 'sex up' what should have been a children's story. Granted, if I had never read anything beyond friendship, in the Doctors' relationship, though dur! this reading of this application is totally valid. Except the adaptation had to go that step further with a couple of clunking, expository lines, instead of trusting to two very good actresses. And as a result, there was suddenly a lot of subtext between Sylvia/Theo, particularly on Theo's side, so much so that her ending with the forgotten male admirer seemed bizarre and forced (the book isn't that much interested in Theo, other than as a vehicle to get the girls to the school).
I think my biggest grudges that it was too sentimental: giving Sylvia a love story, playing the Nutcracker music, of all things, all the time there was dancing, making Pauline's life lessons be far more cliched than about gritting her teeth and learning to work. If it had just been a little more traditional, if it had been willing to be the six o'clock teatime children's drama that was true to the spirit of the book, I would've liked it so much more. And I wouldn't have been so cross and worried about whether the new Mrs Simpson was going to end up accompanying Pauline to L.A., so that she could meet the Winters. And maybe they could have cut the silly ending - not even Petrova would choose to fly over attending Garnie's wedding.
My thoughts on the book can be found here.