An earnest 'Mao's Last Dancer'

Based on the true story of Li Cunxin, whose 1981 defection to the United States while a guest dancer with the Houston Ballet forced a political faceoff, "Mao's Last Dancer" sidesteps no opportunity for earnestness or melodrama or, for that matter, slo-mo. Director Bruce Beresford, best known for the Oscar-winning "Driving Miss Daisy," "Tender Mercies," and the underappreciated "Black Robe," pulls out the emotional stops in telling Li's story as one of art-meets-romance.

Anyone looking for measured drama can pirouette off elsewhere.

Li's upbringing in a Chinese backwater, his dance education, and separation from his peasant parents (Joan Chen, as Li's mother, is particularly good) are all told in a sturdy biopic fashion, replete with trials, tribulations and the physical ordeals that punctuate most dance movies. There is, in fact, some great dancing across the stages of "Mao," and some interesting movement offstage, too: Bruce Greenwood, as the real-life and apparently gay Ben Stevenson, former artistic director of the Houston Ballet, does more mincing than a Veg-O-Matic, and you have to wonder what he and Beresford were thinking.

The leads are so-so - Chi Cao is primarily a dancer; that he's acting in broken English lets him get away with a wooden performance. But Amanda Schull, as the dancer Li falls for and marries - thus enraging the Chinese Communist bureaucracy - is a lumber yard unto herself. Interestingly, Chi Cao's parents were teachers of Li Cunxin at the Beijing Dance Academy, and their son was Li's choice to portray him in the film. When he moves, it's easy to see why.