The Cost of Living

The Cost of Living follows a handful of dancers in the UK: a young blonde man with a foul vocabulary, a middle-aged man with no legs who moves around by walking on his hands, a brunette woman forced to put up with the annoying young blonde man's antics, a dead-panned lanky fellow and his love interest, a young, exotic-looking, scantily clad hula hoop-er. With very strange and minimal dialogue, this motley group engage in various unique duets and ensemble dances.

I'd be lying if I said I understood the story that was being told or exactly what the point of it all was. What really struck me though was the dancing (go figure). The way the dancers interacted, despite their different shapes and sizes, really amazed me. For example the man with no legs does a duet with the brunette woman in a dance studio. They roll on the floor, climb over each other, share weight and counter-balance. It was so fluid and seemingly easy. The fact that the man had no legs wasn't an issue at all. I've seen a few videos on YouTube of handicapped people dancing in wheel chairs but I never gave much thought to how they would move without the wheel chair. This duet showed me that dancing in possible no matter what your physical It was inspiring!

In an English seaside town a group of physical performers and dancers tire of their roles and the way they are viewed by "normal" people. Two of the group in particular (an angry Scottish man and a disabled man) feel frustrated with their lot and walk off their show and into town. The Scottish man is very aggressive and talkative which brings him into conflict with some of his colleagues who just prefer their actions to do their talking.

I was interested by this film and wondering what it was going to do but I was quite disappointed when it didn't really go anywhere and instead turned out to be essentially filmed performance theatre. Not that I'm saying there is anything wrong with that, it is just that I had hoped for something more to justify the move from the stage to the screen. As it was though the film didn't have a plot to speak of but was rather a series of semi-dance routines with some dialogue scenes scattered in. To be fair to it, the film does used the camera well to produce shots that wouldn't work in front of a live theatre audience (by directing the viewer's gaze) and it does look pretty good but I just found it frustrating that it didn't seem to have much in the way of direction or meaning.

Fans of dance will like it, although not all of it would be classed as dance, some of it is closer to performance art, which for me is not always easy to get into. The performers are certainly talented and there are no bad performances either in the dialogue or in the movement but I did feel that the material was lacking a point. Overall though it looks really good and has enough physical performance value to be worth seeing if that's your thing – just don't expect it to have a narrative or a strong point to make because I don't think it did.