The life of Isadora Duncan, a famed artist and dancer of the 1900s to the 1920s, is explored in this film. She is embodied by actress Vanessa Redgrave and it is a match made in heaven. Vanessa wears the cloth of Isadora like a wrap, gracefully but with firm determination. We see Isadora in present day - 1927 - and also in flashbacks that show how she came into prominence. Isadora's presence and personality draws the viewer in as she herself tends to withdraw. You feel her movements throughout the film as being small but meaningful and her breaths are but wisps. Lilts. Tips. Vanessa as Isadora is hardly trying to emphasize any one thing and therefore makes the film an experience in feeling everything. A lightness permeates the film, along with the symbolism of the man driving the car that almost hit her, of whom she searches for thereafter. She does have men in her life - James Fox and Jason Robards, who's a millionaire of the Singer sewing machines empire. But they are only secondary to Vanessa. A mysteriousness and sadness encircle the life we are witnessing through losses, fights, and political views. Take in the life of Isadora - the passion, the impractical, the flighty, the will. She might be her own undoing, but she was Isadora Duncan.
Review of Isadora
