La leçon de tango

The dancing alone, in this film is enough to make up for what's lacking in this film...pablo veron maybe a incredible tango dancer, but in this film, his attitude towards everything else can only be summoned in one word:The Male Ego.... he is insecure, and his relationship with sally is one of the most unfinished one i've ever seen, or heard about!..but as i said before..the tango makes up for everything else..makes me feel like hopping over to the nearest studio, offering tango lessons!

Care to dance? Sally Potter, film director ("Orlando"), did, and fell in love with the Tango and Pablo Veron, one of its authentic Argentinian exponents. Pablo is a pretty sexy guy, and a bit younger than Sally, but by the end she's leading and he's following.(I'm not sure whether they actually get to do the horizontal tango.) In between we learn with Sally the intricacies of the dance as an expression of culture as well as personal affinity. There's not much of a story (a year in the life of an original and talented art film maker)but the Paris and especially Buenos Aires settings are evocative - the latter seems frozen in the 40s, when the economic tide went out for Argentina. No, the dance is the thing. Remember Zorba? "A Greek man dances for his soul." Sally dances like a moth drawn to a candle, but wears asbestos underwear and gets an interesting movie out of it. The black and white photography is luminous and completely appropriate, and the soundtrack a treasure trove of Tangos. Recommended for those interested in "romance" ie vertical and horizontal tangos though as I said the latter is merely hinted at. Not a film for people who want a compelling story.

The British filmmaker and screenwriter Sally (Sally Potter) is in Paris writing the story of models that are murdered by a serial-killer. When she sees a performance of the Argentinean tango dance Pablo (Pablo Verón), she asks Pablo to give tango lessons to her. She becomes obsessed by the dance, dancing with Pablo. Then she travels to Hollywood to have a meeting with producers that want to make her movie, but she gives up on her project. She decides to make a movie about tango casting Pablo in exchange of their partnership in the dance.

"The Tango Lesson" is a little movie apparently biographical of Sally Potter for fans of dance in general and particularly the tango. The romance is developed in slow pace and practically nothing happens but good dances. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "The Tango Lesson - Uma Lição de Tango" ("The Tango Lesson – A Tango Lesson")

`Tango is like chess for your feet' Sally Potter claimed during the publicity for this, a film that she wrote, directed, and starred in as a tango dancing director called - strangely enough - Sally. Like the screen Sally, the real Potter also learned from Pablo Veron, also her co-star. If only the film was as cogent and searching as her intelligent definititon of a fascinating dance!

As a keen tango dancer myself, I was eager to see the committed to celluloid the intricacies of a dance which is part improvisational game, part physical conversation, and as much an exercise for the mind as for the body. A lot of work goes into becoming an excellent and effortless `tanguista', and there is much more to tango than most people realise.

Turning her story into a roman a clef, does not make it experimental or postmodern, as appears to have be intended, but in fact regresses to the self-referential musicals of yesteryear such as `Singing in the Rain'. As long as there has been art, there has been art about art, and art about creative blocks. Though such an approach can create masterpieces (such as Fellini's 8 1/2), it can also create ponderous excuses for not creating original art.

Worse still, it can come off as an act of monstrous narcissism. Potter is a stunning dancer, and it is understandable that she wished to play the main role on that count, but in all other respects she is merely adequate (and her singing, in the final scene, quite inadequate). Potter berates Veron in the film for not trusting her to be lead by him; by not trusting another actor to play her part, Potter is doing exactly the same thing.

Thus the film plays out like a rather dull overheard conversation that one might idly listen to on the bus but not miss once you reached your stop. Tango is a dance in which the female must follow unquestioningly, adding little of her own input, occasionally stepping back to let the alpha male shine. The tensions that this has with a woman who is a film director and feminist, used to leading and guiding, rebelling against traditional roles of male and female, might have been fascinating. Instead, it all seems a playful act of revenge against Pablo: in film, she gets to lead, not him.

Though tantalising ideas leap out from time to time (the influence the tango had on her creativity is something touched upon but unfortunately not explored), and as always her visuals are sumptuous, I found the film a disappointment overall.

Sally Potter is always a very original film fact-totum. In this film much more: Not only she write, direct, play and music the film, but she has given both herself and film to the Tango, that is the only true Star.The story is so thin, the characters are so light, the scene are cold, they seems only fills-in. Only the danced frames are full of inspiration and passion. The words are substituted with Tango (and its music), and also a classic scene like the separation at the airport became magic.