Very cinematic. Often fantastic.

Rating: 9/10 (9 October 2000)

Here comes another charming film set in Northern England. Its dynamism almost sticking out of the screen, "Billy Elliot" reminded me that movies were once called "motion picture".
Julie Walters and Gary Lewis offer superb supporting performances as a somewhat brusque dance teacher and a curmudgeonly miner respectively, but the biggest accolade should be received by Jamie Bell, whose natural acting as well as elastic dancing really struck me.
Billy expresses pulses of his spirit - anger, sadness, pleasure and rupture - by dances rather than words. The more skillful he becomes in dancing, the more eloquently he does this, which at some time energetically collides with still lives such as concrete road and brick wall. The scene where Billy shows how much he loves ballet by dancing in front of his static father is just great.
Some have justifiably criticised the superficiality of the secondary subjects like Billy's sexual orientation and miner's strike. My impression is that, as for whether Billy is straight or gay, the director has sensitively dealt with his vacillating and indecisive mind of coming of age. With respect to the miner's strike, had the film been given too much emphasis on it and been depressingly politicised as was "Brassed Off", it would have gone into a wrong direction, marginalising the main theme, i.e. Billy's growth.
Yet "Billy Elliot" has some defects. While it possesses a lot of fine moments when picture and music are so beautifully integrated into cinematic quality (I particularly like the take where the image of rather nettled Billy brandishing long and chunky stick overlaps with Fred Astaire's "Top Hat"), there are also scenes so hackneyed that I almost sniggered, and the generally good music is sometimes obtrusive and over-sentimental. And if the redundant scenes had been cut and the script had allowed time for portlaying Billy boarding in London - where his character would necessarily crash with the value of the predominantly middle-class ballet institution - it might have possibly been more intriguing (but, alas, I realised it would take another film!).
Having said these flaws, I believe "Billy Elliot" is one of the most fantastic works done by the British film industry. Yes, as most people admit, the story line is conventional to say the least, but that's not the whole point. The quality images and the splendid performances certainly compensate for the lack of originality in the plot. Above all, "Billy Elliot" successfully depicts explosive and jubilant nature of adolescence, and should receive massive applause from the audiences of any generation.
Highly Recommended.