Dancing at the Blue Iguana

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.

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.

I was really impressed with Sandra Oh's performance in this film. Everything else aside, she was brilliant. Her Jasmine is a sensitive poet who has real potential, but she's stuck in the sex trade and, like so many real women in that position, is afraid of trying to get out. The familiar, even when it is terrible, is easier to face than the unknown. (For the same reason, battered women stay with the men who beat them.) She takes some steps, but when her boss cruelly tells her that her job is who she is, she gives up. Any tentative confidence she felt is gone. Later, she dances in front of her new boyfriend, not so much to say "This is who I am" but "How could you possibly love me?" It's like, on some level, she was daring him to still love her. How the audience, and especially her boyfriend, could not see how this was killing her soul, is not amazing, but typical - people see what they want to, and in a strip bar, it's T&A, not despair or no self esteem. Her poetry, beautiful, but so cynical and sad, also show the despair she feels. Having been in a damaging relationship, I can say for a fact that Sandra Oh's performance is right on the mark - from trying to be tough, to pushing away someone who cares (while hoping he'll "save" you by continuing to believe in you), to sharing feelings of despair with someone in the same boat - this is all so completely real.

I was also struck by Daryl Hannah's performance as the airhead, always high, who has hopes that are completely out of reach because her lifestyle is sabotaging her dreams. Without two brain cells to rub together, I wonder what she did with all that money...

Jennifer Tilly's character was good too, and provided some fairly uncomfortable humour - when she ripped into the happy mom at the doctor's office, saying "I'm gonna have this baby, and he's gonna sell your kid drugs in the schoolyard" I laughed, but it had an Oh-my-gawd-she's-completely-off-her-rocker quality to it. Plus her scene as the dominatrix trying to deal with her battered and boozed up stripper friend was priceless.

Yeah, the plot (what plot?) goes nowhere, but watch it as a very realistic few days in the emotional lives of some very sad characters.

This was a movie about the lives of 5 different strippers (Jennifer Tilly, Charlotte Ayanna, Sandra Oh, Daryl Hannah & Sheila Kelley). Supposedly, the original script was intended to be built around Kelley's character "Stormy", but as the actresses got to know their own characters and grow into them, the script was adapted to feature all 5. In fact, I think the Stormy character had the least amount of screen time. It was probably the worst story of the five. None of the five stories stuck out as being great. All were average, thus, the movie was average.

The five co-stars here are all good actresses in my opinion, and that saved the movie from the horrible movie it could have been. One thing I did like about the movie is that the actresses that played strippers were not afraid to play strippers. I mean that in a couple of different ways. First, and in many ways most importantly, they were not afraid to be nude on camera. Usually, even in B-movies, there is one actress who wants to play the character but does not want to do what is necessary to play the character. Lets face it, we watch this movie because it is about strippers, and therefore, we expect to see them strip! The second point I want to make here is that the actresses did their homework as far as how the stripper routines work. They obviously took a class or studied on their own the art of "working the pole" and lap-dances, etc. This gives the movie credibility. Not one of the girls looked out of place dancing in the nude. If I was grading this purely on the striptease portion of this movie, it would get a 10. Pretty good stuff.

Unfortunately, this movie is being graded as a whole, and as far as the plots go, they are not quite up to par. The actresses went as far as they could with the given material and more often than not, the movie dragged on, despite the acting, itself, being quite good. I've just recently noticed Sandra Oh and I have to say, she is a pretty versatile and darn good actress.

Jennifer Tilly also stepped up a bit as the rough, biker chick stripper/dominatrix on the side. She played the most troubled girl at the club, Jo, who had to deal with the fact that she was pregnant, on drugs, etc. Everything that could be wrong with her was wrong with her.

Robert Wisdom also did a great job as the sleazy strip club owner, Eddie. His character was strong and was the guy who kept the girls in line at work.

Overall, this was a pretty average story, despite how well the girls and rest of the cast did. I have a feeling a different cast would have made a complete mockery of the movie. As it is, I give it a 6 of 10.

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.