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Review: ‘Reset’ Follows Benjamin Millepied’s Efforts to Rejuvenate Paris Opera Ballet

Reset
NYT Critic’s Pick
Directed by Thierry Demaizière, Alban Teurlai
Documentary
1h 50m

For a year and a half, Benjamin Millepied led the Paris Opera Ballet, where among other things he worked to diversify the company and to rethink the institution’s hierarchy. At one point in “Reset,” the riveting documentary by Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai that chronicles Mr. Millepied choreographing a new ballet, he grabs an injured dancer’s foot and vigorously massages the heel. “Softer is pointless,” he says, ignoring her whimpers.

Mr. Millepied, the choreographer for the Darren Aronofsky film “Black Swan” (where he met his wife, Natalie Portman) and former principal at New York City Ballet, doesn’t do soft. He may be French, but in “Reset,” Mr. Millepied — brash, funny, intelligent — is very much an American living in Paris. And most of us already know the job didn’t work out in the end: Last year he announced his resignation as director of dance there.

It’s hard to make changes at the bureaucratic Paris Opera, yet Mr. Millepied — something of a real-life Rodrigo from “Mozart in the Jungle” — weathers it all with cheerful tenacity. He can be elusive, especially to his assistant, who is continually asking, “Have you seen Benjamin?” In one meeting, she rattles off his list of appointments; he turns to the camera with a hand covering his mouth and says: “Look at her diary. She’s going to kill me.”

But “Reset” also fleshes out the creative process and shows how, for Mr. Millepied, pleasure must always be part of dance. Did the film make me want to see Mr. Millepied’s ballet, “Clear, Loud, Bright, Forward,” on the stage? Yes. And that’s high praise.

Reset

Not rated. In French and English, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: An American in Paris Shakes Up a Troupe. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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