Metacritic reviews

Most dances are for people who are falling in love. The tango is a dance for those who have survived it, and are still a little angry about having their hearts so mishandled. The Tango Lesson is a movie for people who understand that difference.

The Tango Lesson is about as far away from Al Pacino’s Scent of a Woman hotdogging as you can get; it really is about the scent of a woman, in all her fascinating peculiarity.

Surprisingly, Potter takes what seemed like a recipe for embarrassment and excess and delivers a film that's sweet and understated and devoid of diva posturing.

Despite being exquisitely shot and flowing with an inescapably graceful stride that seems in accordance with the film's titular dance, The Tango Lesson works far better as a deconstruction of the creative process than it does as a satire on the industry.

Stiffly playing a filmmaker with a growing passion for the tango, she makes this a handsome, drily meticulous film with no real fire anywhere beyond its supple dance scenes.

The Tango Lesson is ponderously scripted and stiffly acted, and though the narrative causes the characters to skip continents and languages (the story bounces from Paris to Buenos Aires to London and back) little of the passion that drives this story is conveyed.