Battle: Freestyle Parent Guide

Amalie (Lisa Teige) is a battle-hardened street dancer heading for the fight of her life. Illicit, the crew in which she performs with her boyfriend, Mikael (Fabian Svegaard Tapia) and fellow dancers Josef, Alex, and Moa (Morad Aziman, Georgia May Anta, and Bao Andre Nguyen) has just won a coveted slot in the Break the Cypher competition in Paris. Determined to reach her dreams, Amalie makes a risky financial decision and heads off to France.

Paris holds further complications for Amalie, specifically Vivian (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), her estranged mother. The ballet teacher is finally willing to connect with her daughter and they begin seeing each other. But with three days left to prepare for Break the Cypher, Amalie finds herself pulled in two. If she can’t throw her whole heart and all her time into the competition, can Illicit possibly defeat the better-known crews? And how will her split loyalties affect her dancing family?

Battle: Freestyle is ostensibly a dance movie but it’s really a soapy personal drama. Amalie has terrible communication skills and her unwillingness to talk to Mikael or the rest of the crew is the source of most of the movie’s limited amount of tension. The dancing, which is energetic and gives the movie what life it has, is shortchanged by the movie’s focus on Amalie’s often incomprehensible behavior. The German film Into the Beat tells a similar story – girl with ballet-focused parent struggles between street dancing and the classical tradition – but does it with a tighter plot and more believable emotions (and minus Amalie’s hideous fun fur jacket).

As if the plot weren’t trite enough, this production is dragged down by its excessive negative content. There are scenes of non-explicit sexual activity and a moment in a bar where a woman pulls down her dress, exposing her breasts. Main characters also drink to cope with stress and when they are angry they swear, using 11 sexual expletives.

Despite the negatives, the film isn’t all bad. The dub track is decent and the dance scenes will be enjoyable for fans of the art. Frankly, watching dance clips on YouTube or TikTok is probably a better bet: you can have all the fun without the aggravation of this movie’s tired storyline.