Dancing at the Blue Iguana

It is my understanding that the most of this project was done via improvisation which would explain for its peaks and drops. I would imagine that filming a project based on improv is difficult but at times this cast of actors make it look scripted. At best, Jennifer Tilly shows one how its done, at worse, you wish Darryl Hannah had a script.

Here you are presented a few days in the lives of your regular ordinary everyday working strippers/dance gals at a club that is..where else but the Los Angeles San Fernando Valley. You get it all, the drugs, the cat fights, the sex and the overall portrayal that its just a job, a job that is like any other with all the same problems. The five main characters do it well. Jennifer Tilly is the best, Sandra Oh runs a very close second. I was a tad disappointed in Shelia Kelley's character, but Shelia did great with what she had to work with, and I felt the same with little Charolotte Ayanna's character portrayal as well. But Darryl Hannah, who's character was pretty developed more than all the others was pretty sad to watch under this method of outlined improv. The owners of the club were good as well with what they were handed, I just wish I could have known more about them and what made them tick to be at this club. One of the best scenes that makes this kind of dramatic acting inprov filming/work come together is the end with the stripper/writer character played by Sandra Oh and the overglorified porno star who danced for the evening played by Kristin Bauer.

This film had a few small holes here and there to me, but I really enjoyed watching the actresses and actors work with this kind of project on this kind of level..and if you watch some scenes real close, you can see that a few of the actresses and actors were surprised at the lines coming out of other actresses mouths which is what I believe this project was all about. Only on that level, I grant this film of a peek into the lives of these women -- as an overall success and I hope that other film makers explore the genre. It's brings alot of realism in a fictional background.

A must see for anyone studying acting, a rare kinda find for us the regular film viewer, and for those who want to turn in to their cable sets in the middle of the night and watch a bunch of girls strip and dance -- well, that's there too, but Michael Radford lets you know, that is not what is important.

This movie is a film that has a lot of heart to it in a industry where most women are viewed as tramps and bimbos this movie actually shows that strippers have their ups and downs just like women in every other profession. The plot may have lacked at times as other commenters have stated but at least this film is a breath of fresh air from many of the typical strippers being stalked and killed and explotative Cine-porn films out there. Strong performances from Sandra Oh and Jennifer Tilly and up and coming actress Charolette Anyanna is a stand-out as well. Please before you judge this film too harshly look at the other films that represent strippers in cinema as nothing more than T-n-A and you'll realize this movie is just trying to show them as women with the same joys and heartbreaks of life as everyone else.

OK, so "Dancing at the Blue Iguana" features wall-to-wall naked gyrating women. But don't let that put you off. Despite the subject matter - the lives of five strippers who work in the eponymous club (played by Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly, Sheila Kelley, Charlotte Ayanna and Sandra Oh) - and the frequent nudity, "Blue Iguana" is not a T&A movie. Rather, it's a compelling insight into the lives of the underclass of Los Angeles, or indeed, any one of the world's major cities.

If your cinematic tastes run to tightly plotted fare where all the loose ends are tied up with a big gift-wrap bow in the last five minutes, you'll probably it find frustrating. But if you can appreciate a film in which some issues are never quite resolved and some questions are never quite answered - just like real life - then you may be seduced by the "Blue Iguana".

The film has been panned by so many critics that I must admit I started watching with some trepidation, expecting to be embarrassed for the actors. But I became so engrossed in the world of the Blue Iguana that I was actually disappointed when the film ended.

Much of the criticism of "Blue Iguana" is based on the fact that it was made without a script. The actors started with only two things: the title of the film and the fact that it was set in a strip club. Everything else, they worked out themselves - their characters, their storylines, and their dialogue - in an intense series of improvisational workshops. This approach may be unconventional, but it gives "Blue Iguana" a freshness and immediacy which is rarely found in mainstream films. As Michael Radford explains, improv relies on nailing the scene in the first take; once it becomes too polished, it loses its sense of realism.

The female cast has been another target for critics - not because they're not superb actors, but because, in their late 30's to early 40s, Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly and Sheila Kelley would be too old to work as strippers in LA where beautiful young women exist in a buyer's market. But they bring a depth of sadness to their characters - you can't help wondering where they'll be a few years down the track.

Sandra Oh's performance as Jasmine is a standout. Jasmine leads a double life, stripping on the Blue Iguana stage and secretly writing poetry in the dressing room. After persuading her to read one of her painfully beautiful works at his poetry group Dennis (Chris Hogan) starts to fall in love with her mind. But Jasmine realises the fledgling romance is doomed. In the film's most heartbreaking scene, when Dennis seeks her out at the club, she performs her routine to Moby's "Porcelain" with its haunting refrain "So This is Goodbye". The camera focuses on her face. It's an impassive mask, but her eyes betray incredible sadness. She's wordlessly saying to him, "This is the real me. Do you still want me now?"

Putting aside its improv-based development, "Blue Iguana" succeeds on its own merits. If you want to see a T&A film, rent a copy of "Showgirls". If you want to see a haunting, thought-provoking slice of life, see "Dancing at the Blue Iguana".

If you're partial to the documentary approach to feature films, Dancing at the Blue Iguana is one you'll want to grab, possibly from your video store's for-sale rack or any bargain bin that it has tumbled into. It's interesting work and is considerably more than the soft-core porn for which it might be mistaken. The film was also an experiment on the part of the director Michael Radford, who began his film career as a documentary film maker. To remain true to his school, Mr. Radford allowed the principal actresses to map out their own back stories and interactions, then filmed the results. Many people seem to feel this process failed. I must disagree as I think it worked very well. The slight raggedness that resulted simply made the film more convincing to me. It's a thinking person's adult film. Viewers looking for a straight-up porn hit should pass. This film is more about people who have faced certain facts and settled into lives along the underbelly of Los Angeles. The fact that some of them happen to strip is merely coincidental.

Dancing at the Blue Iguana takes an MRI-like scan of life in an L.A.-area strip club, clinically sectioning the lives of the dancers and staff of the club, as well as providing interesting vantage points on the various types that patronize it. There's an elderly gentleman who watches the dancers from ten feet away through opera glasses, understanding that the devil is truly in the details, a Russian hit man who may be targeting one of the dancers. There's even a young woman regular, apparently in the same age bracket as the dancers. The overall slant is so detached, so transparent, that one comes away from the film feeling as though almost nothing has happened. A number of questions are asked but not really answered, but life is that way at times.

The entire cast turns in solid performances that simultaneously reveal both the surface and hidden aspects of their characters but the story really zeroes in on the various dancers, all of whom are portrayed with great conviction by several very fine actresses who have really taken the plunge into their roles; Daryl Hannah's wasted, self-deluding Angel and Jennifer Tilly's freaked and superfreaky Jo to mention just two off the top. There are more. But the real depth resides in Canadian actress Sandra Oh's Jasmine whose character, away from the pole, is a gifted poet in deep mourning for the dead end which her life, due to a lack of faith in her gift, is approaching. When Jasmine is finally persuaded to read at a local open-mike event by the owner of the bookstore where the reading takes place, she blows everyone out the door, including the headlining poetess who is touring behind her newly-published collection. But Jasmine can't be happy because her triumph is simply more proof of her, apparently, terminal weakness and lack of belief in herself, as well as the hate of what that lack has made her. It's a heart-rending performance. (You can catch a glimpse of this little-known actress in the beautifully-done Canadian production, The Red Violin, as the wealthy Asian lady who, with her husband, bids on the instrument near the film's climax.)

Dancing at the Blue Iguana also contains what may be the shortest 75-second sequence ever filmed in which Kristin Bauer's Nico, a touring professional stripper and porn star, whose anticipated guest performance comprises one the film's wispy back stories, takes the stage. The regular dancers all tend to mime various stages of sexual involvement as part of their individual routines; no such nonsense for Nico. When she confronts the hooting, cash-brandishing, SRO crowd, she operates behind a calm, Apsara smile that might have floated off a wall frieze at Angkor Wat. Nico is obviously the girl who really does this stuff for a living. If you were a fan of the great 80's group, Echo and the Bunnymen, as I was, you'll never hear their hit, 'Lips Like Sugar' quite the same way after Nico works with it. Hard to believe that Ms. Bauer is the same lady who played Jerry Seinfeld's entirely mainstream girl du jour in the 'Man Hands' episode, but it is. Her opening at the Blue Iguana is also set up by one of the most unexpected scene-to-scene jumps that I've ever witnessed. Nico's tough as nails but later, in a touching scene with Jasmine, the girl behind the woman comes out. If you find a VHS copy of this very engrossing movie, (It's probably available as a DVD.) you may want to have it duplicated to provide a backup when you finally wear out the tape under Nico's scene.

Upon first impression, Dancing at the Blue Iguana might appear to be just another "T and A movie," like Showgirls. After all, isn't Dancing at the Blue Iguana about strippers and "pole dancers," and doesn't it contain copious amounts of female nudity, just like Showgirls? Yes, on both of these counts. However, merely to conclude from this that Dancing at the Blue Iguana is just another "skin flick" is mistaken, and misses the fact that there is something much deeper going on here. This is more a film about the troubles and unrealized hopes of its characters (who happen to work in a strip club), rather than about their bodies. In short, there is a sadness, poignancy, and desperation, which exists at the heart of Dancing at the Blue Iguana, which gives it a dramatic power not found (nor attempted) in a superficially similar film like Showgirls (which, arguably, just is a "T and A movie").

This film was directed by Michael Radford, who is most famous for his work on Il Postino. The script and the characters in the film grew out of an improvisational workshop which Radford conducted with his lead actors. They each had to research their characters and come up with a storyline for them. Although the acting done in the film is improvised, it sounds polished and believable, and gives the film a raw, edgy feel. The actors for the most part create interesting and sympathetic characters. I'll mention two characters that I liked most. First, Darryl Hannah plays "Angel," a character who is naive and innocent at heart, even though she's a stripper. There is a scene in the film in which she gets herself arrested by a cop, and how she gets arrested I will not disclose, but suffice it to say that it is ironic, funny, and sad. Second, Sandra Oh plays "Jasmine," a stripper who is secretly a poet at heart. She regularly attends a poetry reading and at one of those meetings, she gets involved with its organizer. He thinks that she is a great poet, and perhaps can even get published. She initially has reservations about their relationship, because she is a stripper, and she fears that he won't accept her because of that. He assures her that it doesn't bother him. Skipping forward, there is a scene between them which is my favorite in the film. He decides to visit the club where Jasmine works ("Blue Iguana") after she repeatedly failed to return his calls (and why she doesn't do so is wisely left understated by the film). She comes out and does one of her dance routines. He sees her for the first time for who she really is, a stripper. And although he doesn't say a word, his expression tells all: I do not approve of that. The sound track for this scene is Moby's song "Porcelain," and it feels like it was written specially for this scene. During the song's refrain ("So this is goodbye..."), he eventually gets up and leaves, obviously full of disappointment. Meanwhile, Jasmine continues her dance to a crowd of cheering audience, and although her face might remain expressionless, her eyes betray her true emotion: during her pole dance, tears flow down her cheeks. That scene really stayed with me for some time after the film ended. The girls that work at "Blue Iguana" are strippers, but they're people, too. And just like the rest of us, they seek true love, but are often left disappointed, and they have hopes and ambitions, which they often do not follow through. Watching Dancing at the Blue Iguana, I was reminded of a beautiful point that Roger Ebert made in his (print) review of Sid and Nancy, back in 1986: "If a movie can illuminate the lives of other people who share this planet with us and show us not only how different they are but, how even so, they share the same dreams and hurts, then it deserves to be called great." Dancing at the Blue Iguana is such a film, and it deserves to be called great.