I read Noel Streatfeild's BALLET SHOES over and over when I was little and combined three elements I looked for in books at that age: Plucky girls, serious ambitions that are taken seriously by the adults around them and an exotic setting in both time and place. The three orphans, Pauline, Petrova and Posy, don't immediately want to be famous, but get the idea when someone points out the uniqueness of their last name -- Fossil, because they were adopted by an eccentric paleontologist. That paleontologist, Great-Uncle Matthew or "Gum," has been off adventuring for several years, and with money running out the girls' guardians decide to first take in boarders and then enroll the girls in dance school with an eye to getting them parts on the London stage. Pauline likes dancing but finds she likes acting better; Posy takes to ballet just like the mother who gave her up; and Petrova endures her roles while dreaming of an aviation career.
I definitely enjoyed last year's BBC adaptation of "Ballet Shoes," which I just caught on DVD, but I'm not sure it would make too much sense if you hadn't read the book. The three young actresses give strong performances as the Fossil sisters, among them Emma Watson of the "Harry Potter" movies (as Pauline), and the supporting adults are fine with the exception of Richard Griffiths as Gum, who is terrific. (The film became worth a rental for me approximately 10 minutes in when Griffiths bellows, "I keep a pack of women in this house, and there isn't one of them about anywhere" -- directly from the book.)
The film is largely faithful to the novel down to details of the always-too-tight household budget and the clothes you need to go to dancing school. A romantic subplot added to the movie doesn't really work, but it doesn't distract much from the rest of the movie. I even picked up on a detail I certainly wouldn't have noticed reading the original book, that the maiden-aunt schoolteachers who move into Gum's house together and tutor the girls were probably lesbians. (It's only a quick beat though, in case you're showing it to an impressionable young lady; the film is rated PG "for smoking," which seems dumb to me.) But it's so faithful that it under-explains a few things, which I intuitively understood and expected in the course of the plot. That's why I recommend, if it sounds like something you would be interested in, that you read the book first, then see the movie.
As for me, I'm going to try and dig up some of Streatfeild's adult novels.
5 days ago
