THE STORY – A film that tells the story of American performer Loie Fuller, a pioneer of dance, stage lighting and design.
THE CAST – Cherry Jones, Erin Anderson & Claire Dodin
THE TEAM – Sabine Krayenbühl & Zeva Oelbaum (Directors/Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 90 Minutes
If you attended Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” concert tour, you might have been struck by the shoutout to one Loïe Fuller, whom Swift credited as a “pioneer in the arts, dance, and design – and who fought for artists to own their work.” A turn-of-the-century performing sensation, Fuller pioneered the art of serpentine dance, a series of moves in a specially designed dress with large expanses of diaphanous silk that create beguiling shapes around the dancer. Fuller tried to copyright the hypnotic dance after numerous imitators sprung up in her wake, but the courts denied her plea. Afterward, she racked up numerous patents from inventions that made her act even richer, using lights in heretofore undreamt of ways, essentially inventing modern stage lighting. At a time when women were still seen as commodities more than people, Fuller bucked every societal convention, living a truly extraordinary independent life when most women couldn’t even dream of such a thing.
Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl’s new documentary about Fuller, “Obsessed with Light,” takes inspiration from Swift’s tribute by telling the story of Fuller’s influence through a series of interviews with artists who have been inspired by her and her work. None of them are anywhere near Swift’s level of cultural cachet (the closest they get are Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones and international fashion sensation Iris van Herpen), which puts a damper on the film’s message about Fuller’s impact on the world. While she had an undeniable, outsized impact on the world of the performing and visual arts, those areas are not as culturally relevant as they once were, which makes the film and its subject feel even more esoteric than they are.
Oelbaum and Krayenbühl have a tough needle to thread in making a film about Loïe Fuller almost a century after her death. She was an incredibly modern woman in ways that now seem like old hat. She influenced generations of artists in fields that have faded from cultural prominence, and even her wackiest, riskiest inventions had such specific purposes that if you don’t care about modern dance or theatrical lighting design, then you won’t care about them, even if they are now more commonplace. The film does an admirable job tracing her influences and how they’ve been picked up and expanded on by the artists she inspired, but it’s hard to feel like any of this really matters in a larger sense. While a good amount of art owes a debt to Fuller, would the world as a whole be significantly different had she not done what she did? The film doesn’t care to ask the question, let alone answer it.
The ace up the film’s sleeve, though, is Fuller’s serpentine dance itself. Any time the film focuses on Fuller (a favorite subject of early pioneers of cinema), the modern-day dance company setting a piece inspired by Fuller’s work, or the artwork of the interviewees, it’s impossible to look away. Even the pretentious musings by the interviewed artists sound like the only way to describe it – it simply begs for rhapsodic poetry instead of mere description. Even the brief, grainy glimpses we get of the original footage of Fuller’s performances exert a mesmeric pull, especially the hand-tinted ones that bring to life her experiments with light and color. The film’s one big artistic swing takes inspiration from the whirling dervishes that may have been the inspiration for the Calcuttan dress that caused Fuller first to create the serpentine dance, as those hypnotic, flowing fabrics become the center of busy montages of turn-of-the-century life and art that not only marks the dance as belonging to that period but as something that stood out even then as almost otherworldly and timeless.
While “Obsessed with Light” serves as a beautiful ode to the serpentine dance and the times that birthed it, the film ultimately pales in the light of Fuller’s genius. Cherry Jones offers lovely readings of Fuller’s writings to narrate her journey, and the talking heads provide a wealth of fascinating insight into both Fuller’s technical and artistic achievements. Still, the film’s incredibly basic form feels out of step with Fuller’s trailblazing spirit. Fuller, a phenomenal woman whose accomplishments have largely been lost to history, absolutely deserves to be remembered, and a documentary is a worthy way to do so. As elegantly assembled as this film is, though, it feels made for people who already have some idea of who Loïe Fuller was instead of those who know nothing about her. You’ll leave the film in awe of her but without much of a reason to tell other people.
