Ballet Battery

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I started watching Etoile a few days ago, the new Amazon Prime series from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the wife and husband team behind The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel and Gilmore Girls. It's a good, modern Red Shoes ballet procedural.

The show stars Luke Kirby, who played Lenny Bruce on Mrs. Maisel, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who's strange to see outside of a Lars von Trier movie, playing New York and Parisian impresarios, respectively. Their respective troupes trade personnel as they both take funding from a sinister British oil baron played by Simon Callow. Lou de Laage is a star ballerina named Cheyenne who's swapped to the New York troupe.

Cheyenne and Callow's character are presented as political opposites; she, a firebrand activist, and he, a ruthless capitalist. I can see how the Palladinos plan use them for political commentary. Unfortunately, the weakest scene in the series so far is the introduction of Cheyenne, whom we meet on a ship in a storm as they attack a craft for environmental violations. It's all cgi, which I don't mind, knowing the show has a tiny budget, but de Laage is one of those actresses who is unable to raise her voice under any circumstances, even when she's supposed to be shouting over the chaos of a trawler beset by tossing waves. From then on, I had trouble buying her as the tempest in a teapot she's supposed to be.

Luke Kirby, though, is excellent. Here he basically plays the show's resident Lorelei Gilmore or Midge Maisel; the reasonable, witty one beset by kooks.

I'm surprised how little attention the show's gotten. I wouldn't have heard of it if I hadn't seen it mentioned on Caitlin's blog. But whenever I go to the Prime website, there are dozens of new shows and movies I've never heard of before and never hear of again. I don't know how these studios sustain this output.