Dancing at the Blue Iguana

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".

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.

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.

I would have thought there aren't many ways to make a serious movie about pole-dancers and be taken seriously. The list of stripper-specific life crises is depressingly short. Anything you present in such a movie, any plot twist or character interaction, could take place just as easily in a diner or a hospital or a homeless shelter or, for that matter, an insurance company. The only reason to set it in a strip club is to show actresses with their clothes off so as to draw in the geeks.

The comedic possibilities are endless, on the other hand. There is a scene in this movie in which Jennifer Tilly's character is having a dominatrix session with some hapless male, and one of the other strippers, drunk and battered, walks in on it and refuses to go away and wait tactfully for the session to be over. Tilly alternates between stridently artificial abuse of her "slave" and sincere concern, mixed with exasperation, for the other woman in the room. It reminded me a little of the scene in Deconstructing Harry where Kirstie Alley, playing a psychiatrist, alternately delivers calm professional platitudes to her patient and screams obscenities at her philandering husband in the next room. The problem with Tilly's scene is that battered woman in the room with her. We aren't allowed to see any comedy in *that*.

So, the movie tries to be taken seriously by being mostly grim and depressing. (Darryl Hannah's character is actually painful to watch.) But all throughout the movie one question kept tugging at my thoughts: "Why is this stripper film different from other stripper films?" The answer came at the start of the closing credits, when it was revealed that the movie was largely (totally?) improvised by the actors. That set me back. It accounted for the eerie feeling I had that I was watching some sort of documentary. The actors and the director deserve a lot of credit for trying something like this. The movie is definitely worth seeing.

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.