darlingfox: ([clamp] if lady luck gets on my side)
darlingfox ([personal profile] darlingfox) wrote2010-05-03 09:44 pm

[rec] Billy Elliot

day 01 → your favorite song [Poets of the Fall - War]

day 02 → (one of) your favorite movie(s)

I'm sure I've mentioned somewhere that I really, really love Billy Elliot.

Against the background of an increasingly bitter miners' strike that his elder brother and father are involved in, young Billy Elliot finds he prefers joining in the girls' ballet class at the local hall to the boxing he's there for. The ballet mistress soon realises he has real potential, but no-one, least of all his family, is likely to go along with a lad doing dancing.

I've never been interested in ballet, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying this. The plot, characters and the set all feel very real.

Billy wants to dance ballet and you can understand why it's a problem in their world (1984, a mining town in northern England). And it's not just Billy's story, it's about his father too. One of my favorite scenes is about him and what he does is heart-breaking considering what happens soon after it (could I be more vague? :P).

Bonus points: a gay, crossdressing character who isn't treated as a freakshow. Or rather, no more than Billy is.

In conclusion: it's a coming-of-age story with heaps of I'm-different-itis, and it's so lovely that I always go awwwww.