Last Dance

Much like Sam Rockwell, who seems to have a dance scene, however brief, in most of his movies, Denis Lavant takes command of the screen when he dances. But while Rockwell has a loose-limbed physicality that signals his floppy-doll dance style, at first glance Lavant appears too earthbound to take flight. His dancing, though, is explosive, without vanity, from his leaping, stumbling run through the streets of Paris in Mauvais Sang to the graphic motion-caption contortions in Holy Motors to the whirling-dervish dance that ends Beau Travail. The latter has stayed with me since I first saw the movie and I’ve rewatched it more than a few times since thanks to YouTube, where its multiple appearances indicate that I’m not the only one mesmerized by it. I wrote about that scene for Ozy.