CINEGEEK.DE Dance Movies of the 80s 

Sure, we all love Flashdance and yet the movie could be much better! It's almost as if real life has overtaken Hollywood here! Who has seen the biography of Jeniifer Beals? A model from Chicago, discovered by a famous photographer, who finally fights her way up, goes to Yale and studies acting in New York? Beals plays Alex and she also has to fight her way to the top. Right at the beginning, when Irene Cara's theme song begins (and Irene Cara also comes from the street and walked a rocky road!), Alex is given certain attributes. She rides her bike to work early in the morning, stroking a cat that crosses her path. On a kind of disco construction site we experience Alex in a male profession: she is a welder. In the evening Alex is in the club, where she causes a furore as a dancer. Beals is really a fresh and talented actress, but the team around director Adrian Lyne doesn't make it easy for her. The script, written by some authors like the infamous Joe Eszterhas, looks like the sellout at Hollywood's supermarket. You just steal something from a whole bunch of movie classics. It's too bad that nobody has worked out Alex's character. Character? As described, one should rather speak of certain attributes. She, the Go Go dancer falls in love with her Porsche driving boss, then she visits her mentor, trains in a factory loft in Pittsburgh and is watched by her drooling dog. Alex has a variety of skills, for example she can fish her bra out from under her sweatshirt without taking it off. Again and again there are interruptions by the great dance scenes. Meanwhile Alex dreams of ballet, even though she works in the most typical working class bar in film history. What the script can't do, the soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder does. And the naturally appearing Jennifer Beals! You are missing Flashdance emotions! But for me this is also a film that I remember from my childhood. A film like a time machine. Flashdance is deeply and intimately connected to the 80s and that's why we love it so much!