2018 ( UK | France | Serbia ) ( Biography, Drama )
Starring: Oleg Ivenko, Ralph Fiennes, Louis Hofmann
Director: Ralph Fiennes
A Member’s Choice Film. The White Crow is a sumptuous biopic about Nureyev, the volatile ballet star born in poverty who changed the very nature of dance to become a cultural icon. Ralph Fiennes’s third feature as director also acts as a film debut for Ukrainian dancer Oleg Ivenko who plays Nureyev. Flashbacks to Nureyev’s peasant roots flit between the serial seductions and liaisons, political arguments and useful acquaintances that lead to his ground-breaking defection from the Soviet Union in 1961. Even if ballet is not to your taste, Fiennes’s eye for period detail and David Hare’s pacey script forge a platform from which Ivenko leaps almost as magnificently as the diva-like world-shaker himself. Fiennes also makes a notable appearance (speaking in Russian) as Nureyev’s dance coach, Pushkin.
As Fiennes reminds us again and again in what is his best film yet as a director, the “white crow” will do anything to put himself in the limelight, the one place he is convinced he belongs.
(2hr 7min)