I'd been waiting some time for this to come out. As a gymnast myself, I totally felt this character. The actor did a brilliant job. Well done!

The film-maker (herself an ex gymnast) has used an extremely sparse style of documentary making here. There's no back-story, no intro, no interviews, no beautiful juxtaposition and no narration. It's a very effective way to make the viewer uneasy and wrong footed from the start... And that's how you should feel watching this true life horror show.... Unless you are into 70 minutes of verbal and psychologic abuse of course!

Now as for the main protagonists themselves... it's the story of a high level gymnast and her two coaches preparing her for the olympics in 2016. What we are unflinchingly witness to is nothing short of verbal and psychological abusive. How a fellow human being can treat someone in such a degrading, disrespectful and abusive way in the name of making them better at a SPORT is utterly beyond me. Yes the gymnast was eventually very successful, but at what cost mentally?! One coach is so used to saying and doing whatever she pleases she thinks nothing of saying the most vile things in the name of "toughening up the gentle soul" of her young star, the other coach veers wildly from doing exactly the same one moment, to extremely inapropriate physical contact the next. It's very disturbing to watch. And don't even start me on the IMDb description of the documentary, who wrote that ... The coaches themselves?! Calling this girl "emotionally fragile" is utterly ridiculous, the unflinching strength she shows in withstanding the bullying only makes the abuse even harder to swallow. Watch it not for the pleasure of perfect elegance but as a study of a beautiful SPORT (as in something done for enjoyment) completely corrupted by the selfish human need for power and glory.

Although I enjoyed watching the journey of an elite Russian rhythmic gymnast as she prepares for a possible Olympic birth, this was difficult to watch on many levels. Bullying through verbal abuse is on full display and how it effects the three main women involved in this documentary. If you do not have some basic knowledge of rhythmic gymnastics and the three women involved, this documentary does not give you enough information to fill in the gaps. Understanding more background on the two coaches would have added some much needed context.