Tango is a simple name for a complex movie. The story of a
tango dance performance director, this movie deals with youth and aging,
with gender roles and power structures, with the consuming specter of
Argentina¡¯s military regimes, and, to a lesser extent, with love, all
framed within the context of tango. In fact, even the issue of the movie¡¯s
simplistic name is touched upon.
The growing international popularity of tango has made its appearance
in mainstream films commonplace, with even Arnold Schwarzenegger
exhibiting tango in its most stereotyped form, in True Lies. At the
other end of the spectrum, Sally Potter¡¯s 1997 movie, The Tango Lesson,
uses a thin plot involving Potter making a tango film to pack as much
dancing as can fit into 100 minutes. Tango director Carlos Saura is
himself no stranger to films about music and dance; most notably, Saura
filmed Flamenco in 1995. In Tango, Saura strives for
greater balance between dance and plot, and he comes close to achieving
it.
Miguel Ángel Sola stars as Mario
Suarez, who narrates at the opening
and throughout the film. Mario is directing a tango performance sponsored
by several money-bags, and one of these patrons wants his favorite girl to
get a shot at joining the cast as a dancer. ¡°Don¡¯t let me pressure you,¡±
he says to Mario, but no pressure is needed. Having recently lost Laura
(Cecilia Narova) to a younger dancer, Mario quickly appreciates the
youthful Elena (Mia Maestro), and he asks his choreographer to train her
for one of the lead roles. Soon, Mario and Elena are together, to the
displeasure of her ex, but the film has greater aims than the usual
stories of passion and jealousy.
Music and dance are the heart of the film. Characters dance the tango
and dream about dancing it, onstage, at a club, even as youngsters in
school. Monotony is scarcely an issue, however. There are segments with
only singing, segments of films from the ¡¯30s, and there are segments of
song and dance. At times, the tango is played along by masters such as
Antonio Agri on violin and 82-year-old Horacio Salgan, astounding on
piano, and at other times the music is joined by a dancer. The dancing,
too, has an invigorating range. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro expertly
uses lighting, spanning colors, and levels of brightness, to keep every
dance sequence poignant, and crisp closeups of feet and faces are used to
good effect.
Although the romantic subplot is basic, other aspects of the plot are
profound. Mario and Elena discuss gender roles at dinner together. As the
camera contrasts his tired manner with her pristine smile, the fresh
dialogue allows Mario to stumble over and over until he conveys his point
successfully, and raised issues about whether man¡¯s traditional thirst for
power is an example the younger generation should emulate are not simply
time-fillers. In each other¡¯s arms later, the two mull over their happy
present and whether giving up the past is too big a loss if that past is
haunted.
This difficult choice gives rise to a forceful sequence that invokes
the tortures and disappearances enacted by Argentina¡¯s military
dictatorships in the recent past, which the movie manages without breaking
its context. Other powerful scenes include ones of silent dancing as well
as a part of the performance depicting the arrival of immigrants at the
turn of the century.
Given the focus on music, acting roles are sparse. The aforementioned
scenes between Sola and Maestro stand out. Juan Carlos Copes, as a
middle-aged but fervent choreographer, is also strong, while the
delightful Enrique Pinti, always listed in the ¡°and Enrique Pinti as¡±
category as of late, steals a few scenes. The dancing is also solid, of
course, with Copes, Narova, and Maestro in major roles and with the
requisite appearance by Julio Bocca. Original music by the prolific Lalo
Schifrin suffers from being played too many times, as is often the case in
dance movies, though certain compositions, such as a deep-pitched piano
piece, could have had more playing time. Of course, there are also
arrangements of classics such as La Cumparsita.
The movie¡¯s English subtitles, incidentally, are worse than the average
translation. For example, ¡°hug¡± is repeatedly mistranslated as ¡°kiss,¡± and
the common metaphorical phrase ¡°the old guard¡± is displayed as the name of
a band.
In all, Tango is accomplished filmmaking. It falls short
primarily in attempting to use a meta-plot (the movie is a performance
about a performance) that does not really lead anywhere, though it works
well enough as the movie¡¯s framework. On other levels, from dancing to
dialogue, Saura steers the film with mastery and poignancy. His finest
accomplishment is in pacing, an essential element of tango. Like its
dancers, the film lingers sensually on beautiful scenes, zestfully
springs, catlike, and gyrates back and forth between these conflicting
urges.
From www-tech.mit.edu/
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