Tango

Carlos Saura (1998)

Synopsis

Mario Suarez (Miguel Angel Sola), a middle aged director, has recently separated from Laura (Cecilia Narova). He embarks on a new project, a dance work about tango. Asked to audition the young Elena (Mia Maestro) by his mafioso backer, he chooses her for his leading lady and the two embark on a passionate affair.

Review

The filming of Tango was for Carlos Saura the fulfillment of a desire of many years standing. For this film he turned once again to Oscar winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro with whom he had worked on the documentary film Flamenco. The results are visually stunning.

Tangueros will be especially pleased to see Juan Carlos Copes given a leading role as Carlos Nebbia, the film's choreographer. Carlos Riverola also makes an appearance.

However, if we had thought that Saura was going to use tango as a medium to tell a story in the way he had done in his trilogy of films of flamenco we were to be disappointed. In this film there is no story. Returning from his research trip, Saura confessed in an interview that he had no ideas for a plot and so he had to resort to the device of using his own situation - a director who has run out of ideas - as the basis for the film. We are left with the impression of a director visually impressed by tango but with nothing actually to say about it.

I shan't go on about middle aged man having affairs with pretty young girls, but I will say that I would rather have seen much more of the powerful, strong Laura than the gamine Elena. A missed opportunity.

- Mike Lavocah

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Widescreen
Classification:
Starring: Miguel Angel Sola, Cecilia Narova, Mía Maestro, et al.
Director: Carlos Saura

Edition Details:
• PAL format
• Colour, Widescreen, Subtitled, PAL
• ASIN: B00004UEZX
• Catalogue Number: MTS8004

The Tango Lesson

Sally Potter (1997)

Synopsis

A film director (Sally Potter) strikes a bargain with a tango dancer (Pablo Veron) that she will cast him in a film if he will teach her to dance.

Review

Sally Potter's film is, in a nutshell, an autobiography of her own encounter with tango in which everyone plays themself. From a dancer's perspective the film deserves praise as the first film of modern times to attempt to show something of the real tango scene in Buenos Aires. There are some wonderful dance sequences, of which two in particular - both of them demonstrating Pablo Veron's genius - stand out: a terribly witty dance across parallel airport escalators, and Pablo's mad tap routine round his tiny Paris flat as he cooks Sally dinner. Of the other dancers in the film Carlos Gomez lives in the memory for his effortless, magnificent masculinity.

Superificially one could say that the film portrays a couple moving from conflict to resolution, all of this being expressed through dance. But the resolution feels more like a truce than a true drawing together. The tango the film portrays is not the tango of the embrace, but that of a fight, a collision - something the official publicity of the film aludes to in a quotation from Borges (who hated tango).

Having decided to make her own story and to cast herself, the real question about this film is whether it can involve us in Sally Potter's obsession. Sadly, the answer is no. As a dancer Sally Potter acquits herself honourably but is not of the same calibre as the men she partners. As an actress she is a times strangely wooden.

A thought provoking but flawed work.

- Mike Lavocah

Visit the Sony Pictures website

For a rather different view of the film, see Rick Barton's review for Gambit Weekly in New Orleans

Amazon Price: £13.99

Edition Details:
• PAL format
• HiFi Sound, Black & White, Colour, Subtitled, PAL
• ASIN: B00004CWE3
• Catalogue Number: ART151

Naked Tango

Leonard Schrader (1991)

Synopsis

An unhappy young bride married to an older man assumes the identity of a suicide victim whilst sailing from France to Argentina. She discovers that she is now an immigrant mail order bride promised to a brothel owner.

Review

Thought of as an "adult" film by the general public, Naked Tango has developed a cult following among European tangueros. As Saura did for flamenco to great acclaim in his masterpiece "Matador", Schrader takes the themes of sex and death and, albeit rather coarsely, weaves them into the dance. Violent and crude, but probably the best film yet made dealing with tango.

- Mike Lavocah

Amazon price: £10.99

Classification:
Starring: Vincent D'Onofrio, Esai Morales, et al.
Director: Leonard Schrader

Edition Details:
• PAL format
• Surround Sound, Colour, PAL
• ASIN: B00004CLZM
• Catalogue Number: S090523