There’s no denying the love for dance that flows all through Étoile (French for “star”), a ardour undertaking for Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the dynamic duo of writing-directing-producing auteurs who delighted us for years with the hyperverbal screwball joys of Gilmore Ladies and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Of their new collection for Prime Video, which in an ill-advised transfer is dropping all eight episodes directly for a too-much-is-too-much binge, they return to the world of ballet, the setting for his or her gone-too-soon 2012-13 present Bunheads, a charmingly modest heartwarmer set at a small-town ballet faculty.
In Étoile, every part is on a a lot grander scale, with colorfully neurotic and excessively eccentric characters working — and speaking, babbling, every so often speechifying — within the high-profile cultural capitals of New York Metropolis (Lincoln Middle, to be precise) and Paris. When the highlight activates the tortured, temperamental artists in rehearsal or efficiency, it’s all very dazzling. Sadly, these moments could be fleeting, and since a lot of the remainder of the present isn’t fairly as mild on its toes, sacrificing appeal for tiresomely melodramatic histrionics, it’s possible you’ll want they’d all generally simply shut up and get on with the dance.
The robust forged (together with recurring roles for Gilmore alums Kelly Bishop and Yanic Truesdale) is led by Emmy winner Luke Kirby, who killed as Mrs. Maisel‘s Lenny Bruce however is hampered by a perpetually furrowed forehead as Jack McMillan, the suave if harried govt director of the (fictional) Metropolitan Ballet Theater. In a daring transfer of desperation to maintain the corporate afloat, he agrees to an across-the-pond expertise swap with an equally beleaguered Paris operation. His French counterpart, Geneviève Lavigne (a frenetic Charlotte Gainsbourg), has much more at stake, as a result of she lacks Jack’s household connections and fortune and is aware of if this experiment doesn’t work, she’s out of a job.
Geneviève’s largest threat is giving up her best star, the intensely terrifying étoile diva Cheyenne Toussaint (Lou de Laâge, sensational), in trade for a younger ballerina (Taïs Vinolo) her firm as soon as rejected however whose mom occurs to be the French tradition minister, and extra critically, the up-and-coming choreographer Tobias Bell (Mrs. Maisel‘s Gideon Glick), a mercurial free cannon precisely described as a “helpless genius.” Cheyenne and Tobias are each disrupters, exasperating anybody who foolishly tries to rein them in. And within the case of Cheyenne, usually crushing the spirit of fellow dancers younger and outdated with blood-chilling soliloquies delivered with a Medusa-like glare.
Is she a monster? Probably not. That function is reserved for the deep-pocketed and decoratively debauched benefactor Crispin Shamblee (Simon Callow, milking each second), whose background in company darkish arts is as shady as his enthusiasm for the nice arts is real. Jack loathes him, however cash talks, similar to every part else right here.
Whereas she’s fearsome in angle, Cheyenne reveals her extra tender facet when she discovers a younger lady, the lovable SuSu (LaMay Zhang), dutifully practising alone after hours whereas her mom, a cleansing woman, works, and takes the kid underneath her formidable wing. Cheyenne additionally delivers the present’s mission assertion in a public interview discussion board when one other younger lady, who gave up her dancing goals for college, asks if this étoile ever thought of one other path. The reply, after all, isn’t any: “Dance enables you to float above all of it. It enables you to play within the clouds. And once I dance, I would like the viewers to play with me, to bop within the clouds, to really feel what I really feel, to listen to my tune.”
When Étoile stops attempting too exhausting and offers itself as much as that kind of starry-eyed euphoria, it’s a terpsichorean treasure.
Étoile, Collection Premiere (eight episodes), Thursday, April 24, Prime Video