TANGO
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Sony Pictures Classics Director: Carlos Saura Writer: Carlos Saura Cast: Miguel Angel Sola, Juan Luis Galiardo, Mia Maestro, Cecilia Narova
"Tango" is film that possesses moments of rare, surreal beauty, a surprise ending that will knock your socks off, and one monologue in particular that plumbs the depths of its principal figure's feelings. Helmed and written by the most Spanish of directors, Carlos Saura, it is creatively put together and suffers only when we measure it against the films with harsh political edges that Saura made at the height of his career. During the Franco regime he had to disguise his censures of the Fascist government through the use of allegory, dreams and symbols and while there is no need during this period of liberal, South American governments, to do so, Saura seems content to make films more for the tourists than for the politically engaged.
In a movie of almost two hours he shows us more about the tango than we may wish to know at one sitting while the story--which treats the theme of the circularity of history--is a trifle underwritten. Like Saura's previous film, "Flamenco," his current work shows us the steps of the dance, gives us more than a hint about the passions that underlie it, and then beats the subject to death. Watching this periodically involving drama, you might actually wish that Franco--or, in this case, the Argentine generals that in the mid-seventies overthrew the legitimate government of that South American state--were in power for the ten weeks that the movie was being put together. "Tango" might then recover some of the resonance of Saura's early films such as his "Los Golfos," which dealt with street kids in much the way that Vittorio De Sica treated the urban waifs of his own country. While Saura continues to be influenced by Luis Bunuel's use of surrealism, he has shucked off most of his predecessor's preoccupation with the inanity of the bourgeoisie and the sufferings of the down-and-outs.
"Tango" opens on Mario Suarez (Miguel Angel Sola), a choreographer in mourning for his lost love, as he recounts his ecstatic days with Laura Fuentes (Cecilia Narova). When a mafioso who owns 50% of of Mario's show, Angelo Larroca (Juan Luis Galiardo), suggests that Mario audition Angelo's girl friend Elena Flores (Mia Maestro), Mario falls in love with the 23-year-old beauty and asks her to live with him despite Angelo's warning that he will kill her if she ever left him. In the most touching scene of the movie, Mario is on his first dinner-date with the young dancer and spills his feelings to her: "I feel energetic as a boy and want to act like it...I enjoy a girl of 18. Is that unseemly? Where are my youthful illusions? I feel my life is superficial and that I'm just trying to avoid sinking in the muck."
If only Saura gave more vent to the story! It's not that the narrative is original, but the Spanish director shows here that he has a gift for dialogue as well as for the dance. Instead, the exchanges appear to serve largely as a break from the frequent dancing, though Saura does demonstrate his feel for variety more than he did with "Flamenco." He has the men dancing separately from the women; two women dancing seductively with each other as do two men; and a variety of tangos performed in ballrooms as well as on the stage. Lalo Shifrin's original score points up the seductiveness of the music to the tango, while Emilio Basaldua's design transforms a set in a Buenos Aires suburb into a surreal dream, vivid with reds while abundant in contrasting whites and blacks. People from eight to eighty twist their bodies bewitchingly. The most vibrant scene in the film occurs as the dancers perform a re-enactment of the terror faced by the people after the infamous coup of 1976 when several thousand Argentinians simply disappeared. The entire film is unified by a strong performance from Miguel Angel Sola as the aging overseer of the troupe.
Early on, the maestro of the dance company says, "I want to see one body with four legs." This statement pretty much sums up the allure of the tango, perhaps the world's sexiest dance, and for the major part of the movie we've got bodies and legs in abundance.
Rated PG-13. 115 minutes. Copyright by Harvey Karten (1999)
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