THE TANGO LESSON
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
There is a telling moment in THE TANGO LESSON. The spectacular dancer known as Pablo Veron, played with charisma by the extremely handsome, real life tango dancer of the same name, performs something akin to a solo whirlwind. He stops his spinning and admires himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. After fixing a single strand of rebellious hair in his mustache, he stares into the mirror and blows a kiss to his true love, himself.
In a movie that mixes reality and fiction with a movie within a movie and with characters playing quasi-autobiographical parts, Sally Potter plays the lead named, you guessed it, Sally. Sally Potter, normally known as a writer and director, her last picture was ORLANDO, takes on both of these roles again in addition to starring in THE TANGO LESSON.
Late 40-ish Sally, with her pencil thin lips, her curly hair, and her attractive, svelte figure, makes an interesting contrast to Pablo and the male professional dancers in the film. Pablo especially is a younger hunk with rippling muscles, gobs of hair and a close cropped beard. Sally clearly enjoys every minute of it. Here the ambiguity is intentional for it is never clear where the fictional Sally ends and the real Sally begins.
So what exactly is a tango? Forget the concept of the tango as a part of the ballroom dance cannon for it shares little with the fox trot or the waltz. The tango is a dance in which two dancers become one from the knees up, but it is below the knees where the action lies. The feet fly around as if in constant but highly controlled spasms. The result is an energetic and highly visual endeavor. Would that the movie, THE TANGO LESSON, possessed more of that fire. When the dancers are on center stage the film certainly hums, but the rest of the film relies on a story that is so thin that it quickly loses its audience.
The story concerns an obsessive Sally, who finds a flaw in the flooring of her Parisian apartment. To fix it the contractor must tear up her apartment, so he asks her if she has some place to go for a few weeks. Boy, does she. Off to Buenos Aires, she signs up with a couple of instructors who teach tango via dance immersion. When she goes back to Paris to see her old instructor (Pablo), he is amazed at the transformation in his once awkward pupil.
Tango becomes the sexual subtext of the picture. To underscore this, Pablo greets Sally with a deep-voiced, "It's been a long time." With a twinkling smile, she responds, "It certainly has." To consummate their reunion they immediately "have tango" together.
Another subtheme concerns religion -- Sally and Pablo are both of Jewish ancestry. The passion of the tango has become their religion. "How did you choose the tango?" Sally asks Pablo. "I didn't; the tango chose me," he replies as if he had had a religious calling.
The movie contains little spoken dialog. The dialog is more danced than spoken. When the overly long film is in dance mode, the black-and-white images (only a small part of the film is in color) come alive. The surreal subplot of her pitching a movie to Hollywood and the remainder of the non-dancing parts are disappointing.
Sally does enjoy poking fun at Hollywood, especially the producer who wants to know why he should write her a check for $20,000,000 for her proposed film. The producer doesn't like it being in French and starring a legless fashion designer. That this film would almost certainly be a poor investment at twenty mil is ignored as Sally, the writer, ridicules Hollywood.
THE TANGO LESSON, even in the many slow parts, is a hard film not to like. You have to respect a director, writer and actor so in control of her life. "It doesn't suit me to follow," she tells Pablo. "It suits me to lead, and you can't deal with that."
THE TANGO LESSON runs 1:41. It is partially in French and Spanish with English subtitles, but it is mainly in the languages of English and dance. It is rated PG for adult themes. The picture would be fine for kids around ten and up.
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