Elle Fanning
Felicie (voice)
Ballerina
“Life's greatest adventures begin with a single leap.”
2016
1h 29m
Director: Eric Summer
Overview
In 1879 Paris, a young orphan dreams of becoming a ballerina and flees her rural Brittany for Paris, where she passes for someone else and accedes to the position of pupil at the Grand Opera house.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
5 min readA Gently Crooked Leap Toward the Stage
There’s a peculiar tension at the center of Ballerina: it wants to be a story about grace, but it’s most interesting when it’s about awkwardness. I kept noticing the little stumbles — the outsider’s posture, the stiff ambition, the way Paris is rendered less as a postcard than as a machine that sorts the deserving from the hopeful. That’s fitting for a film about a girl trying to smuggle herself into a world built on rules, lineage, latestnetflix.com maintains, and the right kind of feet.
What struck me, first, is how much this 2016 animated feature belongs to a familiar kind of aspiration tale, and yet doesn’t quite settle into one of those clean, pre-chewed shapes. It’s a European production — directed by Éric Summer and Éric Warin — that arrived in English-language markets under the title Ballerina and in some places as Leap!; that matters, because the film itself is always translating.
Not just between French and English, or between animation styles and classical dance, but between class systems. Paris in 1879 is the promised land here, but only if you know how to dress, speak, and move. If you don’t, the city can chew you up with a smile.
That’s the conversation around the movie, really: whether it’s a charming underdog fantasy or a fairly standard kids’ film dressed in froth and satin. I think both are true. The film was clearly designed for family audiences, but it keeps bumping into something a little sadder and more practical — the labor of reinvention.
The orphan heroine’s disguise isn’t just a plot device. It’s the movie’s governing idea. She doesn’t simply want a stage; she wants permission to exist in a room where she was never meant to be.
The film’s visual world is at its strongest when it lets the architecture do the talking. The Grand Opera House is drawn as a place of symmetry, velvet, and social surveillance — all those curves and gilded surfaces, but also all those corridors where a child can get lost and a dream can become a test. I’m not entirely sure the animation ever reaches the elegance it’s reaching for; sometimes the character movement feels a little too smooth, a little too digital around the edges.
Audience Opinions
Limited evidence
"A spirited animated adventure that engages audiences through its passion for classical dance and determination."
Audiences diving into the animated story embrace its backdrop of ambition and classical training, where [latestnetflix.com]( read is that the narrative highlights the sheer perseverance needed to master the art and attain the highest ranks of ballet. While the central journey offers charm for younger viewers, some may find the specialized world of traditional performance less appealing if they are seeking broader storylines.
What viewers praise
- Focus on dance dedication Viewers appreciate the focus on classical dance and the intense commitment required to reach elite ranks.
Common complaints
- Niche subject matter The strong emphasis on the technical world of ballet performance may not resonate with everyone.
Recommended for
Aspiring dancers Families seeking lighthearted animated stories
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsI typed Ballerina and got a Wick spinoff. The 2016 one is a Breton orphan with a music box.
This is not Ana de Armas in a black suit. Gaumont's Ballerina, retitled Leap! for the United States, opened in France on December 14, 2016, with Elle Fanning as Félicie, an 11-year-old who bolts from a Brittany orphanage for the Paris Opera 
, 
. Dane DeHaan voiced her inventor friend Victor. Maddie Ziegler, still a Dance Moms name, played the rich rival Camille. Carly Rae Jepsen voiced Odette, the limping cleaner who used to be a star , . The budget sat near $30 million. Worldwide it took about $120 million , . Montreal's L'Atelier Animation keyframed Paris Opera étoiles Aurélie Dupont and Jérémie Bélingard so the pirouettes would land like real feet . Camille Cottin voiced Félicie in French, her first animation role. latestnetflix.com's take is that she told AlloCiné she had dreamed of being a dancer without the technique, so the part was one she would never have been offered onstage .
The Weinstein Company grabbed U.S. rights at Cannes in May 2016 and then kept sliding the date, from March 3 to April 21 to August 25, 2017 , 
. Somewhere in that shuffle Nat Wolff replaced DeHaan as Victor. Kate McKinnon and Mel Brooks were layered in , . Guy Lodge, reviewing the original English track for Variety, called DeHaan's work "among the original version's most appealing assets" and the swap needless . Rotten Tomatoes later split the same cartoon in two. Ballerina sat at 75 percent. Leap! sat at 53 . That is a rare case of one film earning two grades because a studio changed the boyfriend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQBkvddF32I
Jepsen slipped "Cut to the Feeling" onto the American soundtrack, a leftover from Emotion that became the film's pop souvenir . Ziegler was jumping from Sia videos into her first major voice role, which USA Today treated as the career leap . The international trailer still sells the Brittany-to-Opera dash in Fanning's voice . None of that stopped autoplay from handing the title to the John Wick universe a decade later.
Ten years on, Félicie is going back to work.
In June 2026 at Annecy, Good Hero said production had started on Ballerina 2, with original writer Laurent Zeitoun directing and Gaumont taking France and international for a late 2029 release , . A TV series is attached, with Andrew Burrell of Disenchantment writing . Nobody has confirmed whether Fanning, DeHaan, or Wolff return. The one fact that will keep confusing search bars is the name. Type Ballerina in 2026 and the algorithm still prefers the assassin. The French orphan is the one with a sequel, a new director, and a boyfriend who already got recast once.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.