Synopsis
At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange to Texas, he fell in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.
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Cast
- Chi CaoLi Cunxin - adult
- Chengwu GuoLi Cunxin - teenage
- Wen Bin HuangLi Cunxin - boy
- Joan ChenNiang
- Bruce GreenwoodBen Stevenson
- Amanda SchullElizabeth Mackey
- Kyle MacLachlanCharles Foster
- Jack ThompsonUS Federal Judge
- Camilla VergotisMary McKendry
- Madeleine EastoeLori
Recommendations
- 100
Observer
This first-cabin director returns to top form, with this revelatory film his best in years. More than that, Mao's Last Dancer is a masterpiece. - 75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The delight of this film isn't so much in the tale as the telling. - 70
Variety
The story lights up when world-class performer Chi Cao leaps about as the adult Li, but is marred by lumpy melodrama when the music stops. - 63
Orlando Sentinel
Chairman Mao wouldn't necessarily approve. And even today, China won't be showing Mao's Last Dancer. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
Like most films in this underdog genre, the emotional manipulation of the audience is constant and obvious. - 60
Movieline
The degree to which they are willing to share their bodies with the world, seeming to reach out for it with each impossible extension, drawing it in with every reeling arabesque, suggests a desire for engagement that is visceral, human, and true in all the ways this film is not. - 50
Village Voice
Based on the memoirs of Li Cunxin, Mao's Last Dancer means well, but it stumbles between genres. - 50
Chicago Tribune
A dramatic true story has been made into a diffident biopic.
