“Living it Up: A La Nouba DVD Review” (Part 1 of 2)
By: Ricky Russo – Orlando, Florida (USA)
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Title: La Nouba DVD
ISBN: 1-4049-6954-3
UPC: 0-43396-09054-5
Video: 1:78:1 Wide screen
Audio: English 5.1 / 2.0 (Defaults to Dolby Stereo 2.0)
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese
Run Time: Approx 90 Minutes
When I sat down to review the La Nouba DVD, I did so with a bit of apprehension. Of all the Cirque du Soleil shows I’ve seen live (and I’ve seen them all except KA), La Nouba is the one I’ve seen the most. At last count I’ve seen La Nouba live 10 times; a modest number by some standards, but enormous by others. It all can be attributed to practically living next door to the Cirque du Soleil Theater at the Downtown Disney West Side complex in Orlando, Florida. In contrast, I dare not think how many times I’d have seen Mystère, O, or Zumanity by now if I were living in Las Vegas, though that thought has crossed my mind.
La Nouba was also my first live Cirque du Soleil experience. I fondly remember my first viewing in the spring of 1999. Though I don’t know the cast and crew by their first names, nor do I party with them, to say that I know the show like the back of my hand is almost an understatement. In fact, there isn’t a single person I know personally save for some of the nice folks working in the Marketing department. Even so, La Nouba is a show I am most familiar with — its acts, its theme and its music — thanks to the looming presence of its permanent Grand Chapiteau.
So when it came time to watch the DVD of the production and review it for our faithful readers I wasn’t very excited. I didn’t know then how wrong I would be.
Disc One — The Production
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My review of the 2-disc set began, curiously enough, with the second disc — the extra special features but I shall begin my review of the set with the first disc, which houses the Production itself. As soon as the DVD is inserted into your player of choice, and the FBI and INTERPOL warnings flash by, we are immediately drawn into the world of La Nouba through its animated menu. While catchy and playful, the animated menu can be a bit distracting at times, as usually one wants to get directly to the main menu without much fanfare. While nice, the menu animations detract from the main purpose, which is to get to the goodies!
La Nouba, for those yet initiated, is a 90-minute spectacle produced specifically for the Disney audience at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. As such it is compact and fast-paced, each act coming and going with little fanfare sprinkled about with hilarious clown acts by Michel Deschamps and Serguei. La Nouba in many ways tells the typical Disney fairy tale, though Cirque style with dance, acrobatics and stamina. “Once upon a time,” the story begins. “A door opens and two worlds collide. Dreams clash with reality. The mundane mixes with the marvelous.” And on the stage we no longer can tell where one world begins and the other ends. It’s on this stage we have La Nouba, the party!
What a party it is! La Nouba is a feast for the senses, really coming alive on film. And while I shall not review the actual production within the scope of this article, I shall interject what many have said about the filming of the show:
1) The Parade Starts Too Abruptly — In all Cirque du Soleil productions there’s an opening piece, some kind of story element that helps bring the audience into the production. Like Alegría, with its musicians march around the Grand Chapiteau, La Nouba begins with a Parade of Characters, introducing us to the whimsy and the mystery that is La Nouba. While this parade does exist in the filmed version, a montage of acts is interlaced with this procession, destroying the seamless integration into Cirque’s mystifying world. I would have loved to see the interaction with Le Titan and the Walker, more of the Pierrot Rouge tumbling about drawing the audience into the party, the Green Bird’s curious stares and attempts to fly, or Rokardy balancing on one of the chairs. While we have snippets of this, alas we are not able to experience the Parade of Characters as intended. Unfortunately the beginning montage is consistent with previous filming of Le Cirque Reinvente, Nouvelle Experience, and Saltimbanco. As a fan, however, I do miss the hilarious safety instruction narration and the clown’s mishaps before the show.
2) The Lighting is Too Bright — One of the unfortunate side effects of filming a live production is that brighter lighting is needed in order for the cameras to resolve the action (this concept was explained to us in one of the special features in Alegria’s double-disc set.) Regrettably this washes out the dark, dismal, drab world of the Urbanites that starts La Nouba, bringing their once featureless faces of sameness into sharp relief. This showcase of individuality ruins the entire concept of the opening dance number, whereby the Urbanites (a nameless, faceless mass) move about the world without folly. We’re not meant to see their individuality and in doing so we are unable to fully integrate ourselves into the emotions of this wonderful world. One can get around this oversight, however, by turning down the brightness on your television or monitor.
3) Too Many Camera Movements — One of the things I noted during the start of the production that did, at least, calm as La Nouba progressed was the quick camera movements. Another problem with filming a live performance is that the camera cannot see everything around it. As a fan one of my pet peeves is that the filmed versions of each show omit many of the secondary events that progress on stage. While our eyes adjust quickly to focus on action elsewhere, the camera can’t. We may not like it, but we must admit this truth: the process is to film the main performance. The filmmakers cannot do this and also capture everything else on-stage. However, with that said, it seems the filmmakers for La Nouba tried to please the fans by attempting to capture the little bits of character interaction on stage. The problem, though, is that to do so the camera has to pan away from the main action quite a bit. The quick camera edits came too often and too quickly (often dizzying) and destroyed the cohesiveness of the main act.
4) Stupid Camera Tricks — As seen with the filmed version of Quidam and Alegría, Cirque du Soleil has once again resorted to stupid camera tricks in the filming of their productions. Spinning and Slow Motion are most prevalent here and are as unwelcome in La Nouba as they were in previous filmings. While slow motion is used sparingly throughout La Nouba (it is used in Fast Track and Diabolos), the one camera trick that I absolutely despise is the spinning effect. Please educate me as to the point of spinning the camera at twice the speed of the tumbling acrobat? Doing so only loses the intended effect! Please, Cirque, don’t do this again! It’s cheesy, but most of all, it’s dumb. Let the acrobat showcase their speed without stupid camera tricks!
Above all the nitpicks, La Nouba is a fine addition to your Cirque collection. While we may not like the fact that the disc defaults to the 2.0 Dolby Stereo audio mix rather than the 5.1 Surround Sound, for the most part we find the performance to be complete and quite colorful. A must have for all Cirque du Soleil fans!
Disc Two — The Special Features
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The second disc is inundated with a variety of bonus features unique to the Cirque du Soleil DVD experience. For the La Nouba set we are treated to “In-depth Interviews” with selected cast, a moment with the “Les Cons,” a “Meet the Musicians” featurette, a “La Nouba Photo Gallery,” and a section featuring Cirque du Soleil previews and promos for various current and upcoming products.
First and foremost, Cirque du Soleil Images has provided an eclectic array of promos and previews for us to enjoy within this two-disc set. For example, Cirque poses the question “can amazing be a souvenir?” within a new 45-second “psychedelic” made-for-television commercial featuring the cast and crew of La Nouba (though no mention is made of it’s location, ticket availability, or soundtrack CD – a missed opportunity for cross-promotion), a 30-second Fire Within DVD preview, a 30-second Solstrom DVD preview (which confirms that Cirque du Soleil’s lackluster variety show will be released onto DVD shortly), a short blurb about joining Cirque Club (Cirque du Soleil’s in-house fan club — www.cirqueclub.com) and a very nicely paced montage of the many Cirque du Soleil productions currently available on DVD through Columbia/Tristar & Cirque du Soleil Images.
Another option on the bonus disc is the “Photo Gallery”, a non-static array featuring dozens of still-shots from across La Nouba’s five-year existence. Music from Cirque du Soleil’s Solarium (“A Tale,” Chilluminati Mix) plays in time with the images, which cannot be controlled by your DVD player’s remote control. Fans may recognize the stunning pictorial work of Al Seib, Cirque du Soleil’s one-time photographer, as many of his shots are used in this mix, as well as other candid shots of cast in performance. Though interestingly presented, the “Photo Gallery” is one of the weakest special features in the entire two-disc set.
“Con”, fr. Adj -1, Silly, Simple-Minded. -2.n. an amusing character dressed in white who appears in La Nouba. — Did you know that the only direction the original Les Cons were provided by director Franco Dragone and Guide Guy Laliberte was simply to be stupid all the time? It’s true! You learn this and more in the Les Cons featurette, a behind-the-scenes look at the four men who become the wackiest, zaniest characters Cirque du Soleil has ever let roam their stage. Highlighted here are some of the moments of mischief that did and did not make the film cut, and a much better understanding about the men who play them: David Lebel, Pawel Biegaj, Witek Biegaj, and Justin Osborne.
The meat of the Special Features disc resides in the Meet the Musicians and In-Depth Interviews section, but we’ll have to pick that up next time. Thus far the La Nouba two-disc set has turned out to be quite a jem in the Cirque du Soleil Images collection… if you’ve yet to pick up this set I highly recommend you do so!
END OF PART ONE
Next Issue: We continue with the Special Features disc, highlighting the many interviews featured in the Meet the Musicians and In-Depth Interview sections of the DVD.
