vitis3

I enjoyed 'River Queen' better on second viewing. First time through, I found the story-line a tad confusing and even long winded in places. Admittedly, I was also distracted wondering whether it was shot on the Whanganui (I grew up in and around Wanganui - the river has an 'h'; the city doesn't). At the end though, I was happy with the experience. Certainly happy enough to watch it again.

On second viewing, familiar with the story and characters and confident in the knowledge that I was indeed looking at the Whanganui, the pace seemed good. I thought the acting good and I loved the scenery (an ex-patriate's nostalgia perhaps?). I particularly appreciated the recreation of warfare in the New Zealand Wars.

Others have suggested that the movie was unduly biased towards the Maori. This surprises me as, pakeha though I am, the thought did not cross my mind on either viewing.

PS I recently found out that an ancestor of mine was in the Regiment depicted in the movie.

A little way into Saura's Tango, the main character, Mario, meets Mia Maestro. We are given the impression, or rather we are told, that Mario must be careful as her lover is a dangerous gangster. This is an attempt to create a dramatic counterpoint to Saura's exploration of different aspects of the tango myth - passion, violence, nostalgia and the mirror of the Argentine national psyche. Sadly the drama succumbs to these other intentions and the movie stumbles more or less confusingly from dance to dance. Characters hover uncomfortably between real humanity and symbolism and fail in both respects. As a consequence, the big themes are merely referred to rather than explored - and the gangster's threat fizzles.

This leaves us with the music and (some of) the dancing. We are given a fair sample of tango music. Some of the best is non-dance tango music; highlights are Adriana Varela singing 'Quien hubiera dicho', Horacio Salgan playing 'A Fuego Lento' and tantalising snippets of Gardel singing 'Arrabal Amargo' and Tita Merello singing 'Se dice de mi'. There are also some fine stage tango pieces; such as the ensemble piece with the male dancers. However for me, the most compelling moment is when Carlos Nebbia (Juan Carlos Copes - why did they bother with the alias?) selects an anonymous young woman from the crowd at Confiteria Ideal and they dance to Pugliese's 'Recuerdo'. (In fact, the centrality of Copes to the movie reveals what this movie really is; an attempt to turn a Copes stage show into a movie. I suspect that this movie might have been more successful if they had stuck to that more modest intention.)

However I must confess that my criticisms do lay me open to a charge of gross ingratitude. Four years ago, I knew nothing of the tango beyond the dumbest clichés. I had never heard of Pugliese or Copes or Pugliese or Gardel. Then one Sunday evening in March 2004, my wife and I watched this movie. Inspired, primarily by that 'Recuerdo', we took our first tango lesson three days later. There have been some days since when we haven't danced a tango but there cannot have been many when we didn't listen to tango music. Or read about tango. Or watched tango DVDs or YouTube clips.

In sum, although I have seen many, many better movies than Carlos Saura's 'Tango', I cannot think of any other movie that has had so much impact on my life.

Tango Bar (1988) is a movie about tango the dance, clearly made by people who love the tango. Its plot, such as it is, concerns the return to Argentina of Antonio (Ruben Juarez), a bandoneon player and singer who has fled the reign of the military in the 1970s and 1980s, and his reunion with his creative partner, a pianist and songwriter, Ricardo (Raul Julia). Ricardo, a Puerto Rican immigrant, has chosen to stay in Buenos Aires to run 'Tango Bar' with Antonio's wife, Elena (Valerie Lynch), who is also a tango singer. Such romantic triangles are very reminiscent of many tango lyrics; it can also be seen as an allegory of the exiled artist's relationship with Argentine during and after the 'Dirty War'. However don't get the wrong idea. Character, ideas and plot are all secondary, tango is the star. Throughout the movie, there are flashbacks to the duo's sellout show 11 years earlier, called 'Este es Tango' (This is Tango), and these flashbacks are the real heart of the movie. They include a series of dance sequences that illustrate the history of the tango. One or two are a little dated (as always the 'up-to-date' ones) but the best (and there are many highlights) are beautifully danced to wonderful music. For me, the highlights are an antique style tango danced in a sumptuous Buenos Aires brothel, a 1920s European style tango (halfway between tango argentino and ballroom tango) and, the pinnacle, an authentic 'tango argentino' danced in its proper setting by its true devotees. This last is, in many ways, the best tango in any movie, and I include Sally Potter's much vaunted 'Tango Lesson' and even Carlos Saura's 'Tango'. As Antonio says in introducing it, this is tango danced "the right way" by the people who dance it best; it is also a beautifully composed sequence. It comes at the end of a series of delightful but increasingly bizarre Hollywood tangos. In sum, this is not a great movie but it is a movie suffused with a total passion for the tango. I can't comment what it would do for someone who is not a tango nut but for this tango nut, it is a hidden gem!