The film is an excellent exercise in character study, but the characters, while interesting in and of themselves, become flat in a script that is too shallow to allow a mature development of the conflicts that result from the trials and tribulations of a foreigner trying to express herself in a land where she cannot speak the language, find a job, or even dance the ballet--her craft and passion. The camera experiments with darkly nuanced light and shadow and seldom allows the viewer a chance to see or feel any particular moment in space or time. These fleeting moments may actually reflect, intentionally, the film's theme, but the result is a loosely knitted sequence of film clips that result in a weakly developed plot instead of what could have been a much more powerful story.