The Aerialist

The Aerialist is a sequel to the 2006 WLW film, The Gymnast. These films, combined with 2010’s A Marine Story make up what I am dubbing the “Ned Farr’s Strong Wife Trilogy.” And with each film in the trilogy, I’ve enjoyed Farr’s love of his strong wife, Dreya Webber more and more. But how does this most recent entry rank? Well, based mostly on subject matter, I liked it more than A Marine Story. However, The Aerialist is a weaker follow-up to the first film, The Gymnast. And I thought The Gymnast was just okay.

Taking place over a decade after The Gymnast, The Aerialist focuses on protagonist Jane’s life as an aerial choreographer for a major pop musician. Jane and her fellow dancers have a strong found family bond. Much of the film deals with a new show director coming in and challenging that. As the original dancers dwindle, only Jane sticks out the abusive and disrespectful director. Because Jane has secrets of her own. Namely, the deterioration of her body. As Jane’s career as an aerial dancer comes to a close, old hurts are dragged up by a reporter.

As is true of all three of Farr’s Strong Wife films, the most impressive part about the film is the physicality. The Aerialist is probably the strongest of all three films in that respect. It has more aerial dance than The Gymnast and A Marine Story’s focus was more on strength training than acrobatics. Dreya Weber’s specialty is trapeze and aerial performances. Farr uses Weber’s pre-existing skill set excellently. The moves Weber and the rest of the aerial crew perform are dazzling and deeply impressive. It was a great choice for the production to make a story that leans heavily on Weber’s real world talents. She’s singularly impressive.

The issue with now much Ned Farr loves his strong wife is that if affects her characterization. Weber, and her fictional counterpart Jane are incredibly impressive, proficient women. But the portrayal of the character leans too hard into her being impressive. Jane lacks a level of character flaw. She encounters conflict, yes. But she’s usually depicted as being right or the winner of this conflict. Other characters speak about how Jane is a mystery. However, I don’t read a lot of mystery into Jane. Her characterization isn’t deep enough for mystery. One of the major reasons for Jane’s motivations and choices comes down to physical injury. That’s not mysterious and doesn’t add much to the overall two movie portrait of this character.

The Aerialist doesn’t know how to be a sequel. This is a follow-up to a TV movie made 14 years earlier. The Aerialist fails to walk the line of ensuring the film is accessible to new viewers and tying into the previous one. Mostly, it veers to the side of assuming people haven’t seen The Gymnast. That’s the correct choice. However, there’s still a lot of Jane’s backstory that hinges on having seen The Gymnast. Without that context, Jane’s life previous to this film feels like a huge, boring blank. There’s also a brief section where she returns to attend the her ex-husband’s funeral. She also meets up with Serena, her love interest from the first. This section feels very much like they cut scenes out. I think they probably should’ve gone further and cut the whole subplot. What we got wasn’t satisfactory or particularly interesting.

The Gymnast had a major focus on Jane’s relationship with a woman. The Aerialist only hints at this. Jane interacts with Serena, her ex. She’s also suggested to have an on-again off-again thing with fellow aerialist, Hathaway. But none of this is concrete. Especially without the context of the first one, it would be able to miss these references to Jane’s relationships with women. Hell, with anyone. Jane has a male neighbour who she’s close with and gives her friendly massages. I don’t know what their relationship deal is either. The only reason The Aerialist is reviewed on this site is because of carry-over queerness from The Gymnast. On its own, this film does not have explicit enough queerness to feature on my site.

Up until the ending, I was planning on giving The Aerialist the exact same score as The Gymnast. For the first two acts, they’re the same sort of middling. However, The Aerialist really fails to stick its landing. The story line of Jane’s future career and family of aerial dancers ends up a literal musical number. And Jane’s personal life plot line ends worse. There’s a long-lost child and this weird aside about how donating eggs once made Jane infertile. I’d really like to fact check that claim. Both plots tie up in a nice bow that gives Jane what she wants. For a film that deals so heavily with the complexities of aging, these endings felt deeply juvenile.

The best part about Ned Farr’s work is that he continues to be his awe over his strong and impressive wife. It makes his fairly standard screenplays come to life by anchoring them to an impressive lead performance. The Aerialist is a middling story with a lacklustre, overly simplistic ending. I’m glad that Farr loves his wife. But this film in particular didn’t offer enough character and story to be worthy of Dreya Weber’s physicality and general impressiveness. Given the focus on aging, I have a feeling this will be the last entry into Ned Farr’s Strong Wife film series. But if he wanted to do a follow-up to The Aerialist where Jane now coaches and directs a new crop of aerial performers, I definitely would watch it. It’s crazy impressive what those performers do.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

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