(2003)3Josh RalskeSalvatore Mereu's Three-Step Dancing is divided into four "acts," named for the seasons. The film, exquisitely shot at lovely Sardinian locations, starts wonderfully, with a lively exploration of camaraderie, trepidation, and joy as a group of boys swim in the sea for the first time in the "Spring" segment. The second segment, "Summer," in which a shy, inarticulate shepherd (Michele Carboni) is seduced by a sexy, high-spirited Frenchwoman (Caroline Ducey of Catherine Breillat's Romance) is tenderly erotic and funny. While it could be considered a male fantasy, the rough edges of the locale and the vibrant, full-bodied performances of Carboni and Ducey give the characters' longing for connection a deep emotional resonance. There's a melancholy feeling in the first two segments that comes to the fore in the film's less-successful second half. Francesca (Israeli actress Yaël Abecassis, from Amos Gitai's Kadosh), the nun who attends her cousin's wedding in the "Autumn" segment, is a sweet, likeable character, and the well-wrought detail of the wedding scene is enjoyable, but she remains something of a cipher, which exacerbates the meandering nature of the film. The last segment, "Winter," is the least successful, spinning off unconvincingly into poetic fantasy as the elderly Giorgio (Giampaolo Loddo) has an ill-fated tryst with a prostitute. The weakness of this last segment, in which characters from the previous segments reunite, has the unfortunate effect of calling into question the entire structure of the film, clearly intended as a semi-neorealist look at the progressive stages of life. Despite tailing off in the second half, Three-Step Dancing, which was shown at the 2003 Venice Film Festival, and at the 2004 edition of New Directors/New Films, is clearly the work of an intriguing new talent. But Mereu, perhaps, should have found a way to convey his vision in three steps, not four.
Directed by Salvatore Mereu, Ballo A Tre Passi (Three-Step Dance) takes place over the four seasons, emphasizing issues of tradition versus modern times and the resulting isolation and lack of proper communication. In the first season -- spring -- a group of young boys travels to the ocean for the first time, while summer follows Michele (Michele Carboni), a shepherd whose only non-work-related activity is frequenting a seaside restaurant, where he meets a French woman Caroline Ducey, who is intrigued by Michele's naïveté. Autumn centers around Francesca (Yael Abecassis), a nun who is leaving the security of convent life in order to attend her sisters wedding, while winter finds the elderly Giorgio (Giampaolo Loddo) at the same wedding, struck by the differences between town and country life.
