L.Parra

It is said that the play upon which "El baile" is based is maybe the highest peak in the literary career of Edgar Neville. The movie is, no doubt, one of those which make you think. It is a fable about many different aspects of life: love, joy, freedom, friendship, the process of getting older, the self-consciousness of the upper classes, the fact of devoting life to useless hobbies, the importance given to other persons and to oneself, the loss of a beloved person... All these topics are studied in the movie through the lives of four persons (let us say three persons: two of them are practically the same and are even played by the same actress, Conchita Montes). The study of those topics is often ironic, but never cold, and the movie is full of moving moments. And the three main actors are magnificent. Conchita Montes plays the woman who "should be loved and beloved". Alberto Closas is the cynical and apparently cold gentleman. And Rafael Alonso is his best friend, a sensible man completely in love with the wife of the other. This is, quite simply, one of those movies which make you discover the real, complex nature of people.

In my opinion, there are two things that must be highlighted in this movie. First, a very good script that follows the idea of the "butterfly effect": from a little, casual happening develops an almost surrealistic chaos. The other thing that I would like to mention is the performance of the actors, specially Manolo Gomez Bur, who in this movie plays again his role of normal, grey, shy man, and Rafael Alonso, who plays a very funny role: a "very intelligent" man who is famous because of his great ideas, for which he has even been awarded several prizes. Gracita Morales and Amparo Soler Leal play the wives of these two characters, who join them in a crazy and hilarious night adventure. We should also remark the work of Jose Bodalo, who, as usual, is superb. In his role of bad guy, he pushes us to hate him from the beginning. To finish with, I would say that this is a movie which vindicates clearly the quality that Spanish cinema has never really lost.