Etoiles: Dancers Of The Paris Opera Ballet

Skeptics dismiss the all-or-nothing histrionics of classic ballet melodrama THE RED SHOES (1948) as overwrought and unrealistic, but Nils Tavernier's sober, perceptive documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet proves beyond a doubt that the stakes are every bit as high in the real world of 21st-century dancers' lives. "The system is a machine that crushes the weak," says former ballerina Ghislaine Thesmar of the rigorous process by which adorable youngsters are molded into world-class dancers, and dancers developed into etoiles — stars. Though a relative newcomer to the world of classical dance, Tavernier's grandparents lived on the Avenue de l'Opera, near...