Artists stand up to The Man in 'Desert Dancer'

<b>Mini-review: 'Desert Dancer'</b>

Richard Raymond's "Desert Dancer" comes across as an international version of "Footloose," complete with oppressive government restrictions and rambunctious young rebels willing to defiantly dance and demonstrate their testy Twyla Tharp-titude.

Based on a true story, "Desert Dancer" stars pensive Reece Ritchie as Afshin Ghaffarian, an Iranian freedom dancer who mobilizes like-minded artists into secret terpsichorean encounters in the desert where the not-so-secret morality police can't find them and beat them.

Youthful artisans - particularly Iranians - sticking it to the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran with subversive acts of culture would be an endearing plot premise by itself.

But Raymond's diffuse direction is so old-school, made-for-cable-TV that it blunts the drama and never turns up the heat beyond tepid.

We know bad things will happen to Afshin and his friends if the Iranian police catch them, but there's never a moment in "Desert Dancer" when we fear for their safety so much that we bite our nails in suspense, which we should be doing several times in this story.

The screenplay, by Jon Croker, contains embarrassingly clumsy exposition. ("See those men?" Afshin's mother explains to him, "they're the morality police!" - and she waited this long to point them out?)

A young woman named Elaheh (the stunning Freida Pinto) comes into the group with a writhing audition so free and spirited that it leaves Afshin breathless. (But that's a different tale of American-inspired alienated youth by Jean-Luc Godard.)

Elaheh does have an itty-bitty problem with heroin, prompting Afshin to adopt an ill-fitting voice of adult authority: "You can't dance if you're on heroin!" he says.

At about the 90-minute mark, "Desert Dancer" breaks into chaos with irate Iranian citizens being clubbed and punched by police for daring to stage a protest.

It's one of several scenes that should be fraught with danger and terror, yet it washes over us with quiet assurance that nothing will really upset us.

Even Elaheh's cold-turkey method of quitting her drug addiction lacks the anguish and pain this act of iron will demands, as if Raymond were keeping the true horrors of his story at safe and relatively innocuous Lifetime Channel lengths.

In a metaphoric dance segment where Afshin and Elaheh move in unison, keeping their hands and bodies mere inches apart, Raymond's drama almost breaks into something passionate, as does a climactic scene in France where Afshin declares his defiance against cultural tyranny.

Had Steven Spielberg directed this, audiences would be on their feet cheering. Here, polite applause suffices.

"Desert Dancer" opens at the River East 21 and Century Centre in Chicago, plus the Evanston CineArts 6. Rated PG-13 for drug use and violence. 104 minutes. ★ ★

<i> Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire's column runs Friday in Time out! Follow him on Twitter at @DannGireDHfilm.</i>