In 'Étoile,' details and dialogue drive a ballet-world comedy

Near the commencement of the 5th occurrence of “Étoile,” a highly enjoyable bid premiering Thursday connected Prime Video, Jack McMillan (Luke Kirby), enforcement manager of the Metropolitan Ballet Theater, stands extracurricular New York’s Film Forum, waiting for Geneviève Lavigne (Charlotte Gainsbourg), wide manager of Le Ballet National successful Paris. The marquee reads “Frederick Wiseman’s Ballet & La Danse,” 2 real-world documentaries connected the creation satellite by our top documentarian; the first, from 1995, looks astatine the American Ballet Theater and the second, from 2009, the Paris Opera Ballet, existent institutions whose shadows are formed connected the partition of this drama — with a melodramatic crook oregon 2 — from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino.

The Wiseman notation betokens a definite seriousness connected the portion of the creators, an consciousness that radical mightiness beryllium watching who cognize a happening oregon 2 astir the subject. (And documentary film.) Sherman-Palladino, who studied creation from a young age, is already good known to fans arsenic the pistillate down “Gilmore Girls,” “Bunheads” — which besides had a creation taxable — and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” which stock with “Étoile” an innate theatricality; an involvement successful show (apart from “Gilmore”); and the verbal rhythms of prewar screwball comedy.

There are scenes whose dialogue, with a small adjustment, could person served Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, oregon Carole Lombard and John Barrymore; it’s the satellite arsenic erstwhile scripted by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur oregon Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, if not rather to that level, and the operation of theatrical code and determination shooting — successful and astir New York’s Lincoln Center and the Palais Garnier and Salle Favart successful Paris — makes for thing interesting. Artificial successful a mode that paradoxically allows for thing existent and relatable, it’s also, for each its aerial of sophistication, corny, sentimental, saccharine and intersexual without being precisely sexy — each these radical truly attraction astir is their work.

Yanic Truesdale arsenic Raphael, left, and Charlotte Gainsbourg arsenic Geneviève, the manager of Le Ballet National. (Philippe Antonello / Prime)

Luke Kirby stars arsenic Jack, the caput of Metropolitan Ballet Theater. (Philippe Antonello / Prime)

Setting the bid successful question is simply a connection from Geneviève that, successful bid to combat their communal afflictions — aging audiences, dilatory summons income post-pandemic and creeping taste irrelevancy — her institution and Jack’s would hold to swap immoderate apical talent, generating publicity and excitement connected some sides of the Atlantic. The measure for immoderate this costs volition beryllium picked up by Crispin Shamblee (Simon Callow), a affluent balletomane whom Jack regards arsenic “the devil” and whose exaggerated posh transportation belies the information that he’s an arms shaper (and delivered the eulogy astatine Rush Limbaugh’s funeral); person and/or foe, helium volition travel successful and retired of the enactment arsenic an unaccountable comical chaotic card.

Swapped to Paris is Mishi Duplessis (Taïs Vinolo), the girl of the French taste minister; having been chopped from the French troupe’s ballet school, she’s go a featured soloist successful New York and is present being repatriated, overmuch to her displeasure — and that of the jumped-over ballerinas who respect her arsenic a “nepo baby,” adjacent if they can’t decently pronounce it. Also traded is Tobias Bell (Gideon Glick, a “Maisel” vet), a choreographer we are asked to judge arsenic a groundbreaking genius, and whose thorough eccentricity Glick plays softly and quizzically, arsenic if the satellite astir him, to the constricted grade helium understands it, is retired of joint. Also appearing are a benignant of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are not the lone characters to rapidly vanish erstwhile a insignificant constituent has been made.

Heading westbound to Manhattan is Cheyenne Toussaint (Lou de Laâge), the Paris company’s prima ballerina — its “étoile” — who earlier had made a splash arsenic a impermanent creator successful New York. (She, similar Geneviève, has immoderate aged sub-romantic concern with Jack.) We archetypal conscionable her successful a stormy oversea arsenic an ecowarrior, attacking a vessel sportfishing illegally, past getting arrested herself. Cheyenne’s intensity, often indistinguishable from rage, tin borderline connected the comic, but de Laâge delivers an all-in, all-out performance; she sits and stands and walks similar a dancer (though she besides has a treble for the dances) and makes you judge she’s who the amusement says she is. Whether existent prima ballerinas are this superior and demanding and socially brutal, I don’t know, but this is simply a tv show.

Cheyenne (Lou de Laage) is the étoile astatine the halfway of the speech betwixt creation companies.

(Philippe Antonello / Prime)

“Étoile” is not agelong connected plot, successful the consciousness that it is heading toward immoderate obvious, definable extremity — it has rivulets of plot, rather, involving antithetic characters successful antithetic situations and settings, moving retired problems that person thing needfully to bash with the series’ Big Idea, arsenic the amusement moves toward its first-season irresolution. (New plotlines spark up adjacent the end, making a 2nd play a given.)

In an eight-episode series, specified sidetracks tin hardly beryllium avoided, but it’s a amusement successful immoderate lawsuit much enjoyable successful its details and performances than successful the destiny of the companies, oregon the aboriginal of dance. These plots and subplots and miniplots involving dancers and assistants, technicians and politicians, are not each arsenic rewarding — champion of each is the narration betwixt Mishi and Cheyenne’s intimidating mother, Bruna (Marie Berto), who hammers connected things, and with whom Mishi finds herself lodged — but unneurotic they make an charismatic tapestry.

Kirby, whom I archetypal noticed successful the large Canadian bid “Slings & Arrows,” a Shakespeare-themed backstage drama not dissimilar “Étoile,” and who played a convincing Lenny Bruce successful “Maisel,” rockets betwixt tense vigor and being a tense wreck arsenic Jack; his flying up and down stairs is simply a motif here. Gainsbourg, successful simply accessorized ninja black, is the representation of a pistillate who knows and means business.

David Haig claims a just stock of the show’s drama lines arsenic Jack’s closest friend, Nicholas Leutwylek, a erstwhile choreographer and dancer who present gets astir connected an electrical scooter, though helium remembers the bully aged days of cocaine and Quaaludes and when, arsenic a impermanent creator astatine Stuttgart, hard-partying Germans “gave maine truthful galore petrochemicals I was technically a car for astir of that season.” (Sleep immunodeficiency look to beryllium the cause of prime for young and aged here.)

Kelly Bishop, from “Gilmore” and “Bunheads,” plays Jack’s mother. David Byrne makes a comic quality arsenic David Byrne; choreographer Mark Morris and nary uncertainty different real-world creation satellite figures I couldn’t place lend authenticity. The dancers are good, naturally, adjacent if the dances tin sometimes consciousness little breathtaking than we’re meant to find them. More absorbing is the placing of bodies successful abstraction erstwhile nobody’s dancing, lending a choreographic vigor to mean conversations.

Those Wiseman films are streaming connected Kanopy, by the way, accessible to anyone with a room paper (they’re free, and you should person one). They’ll instrumentality you close into that rarefied world, without the other drama but with plentifulness of inherent drama. I can’t urge them enough.