Tango (1998)
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Review #1,040 |
THE SCOOP
Director: Carlos Saura
Cast: Miguel Ángel Solá, Cecilia Narova, Mía Maestro
Plot: Mario Suarez is a forty-something tango artist, whose wife Laura has left him. He leaves his apartment and starts preparing a film about tango.
Genre: Drama / Music / Dance
Awards: Won Technical Grand Prize (Cannes). Nom. for 1 Oscar - Best Foreign Language Feature.
Runtime: 115min
Rating: M18 for sensuality, some disturbing images and brief language.
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: NO)
In a year with Life Is Beautiful (1997), it would have been a shock if Tango won the Oscar for Best Foreign
Language Feature. But one shouldn't be
surprised that it won the Grand Technical Prize at Cannes for cinematographer
Vittorio Storaro. It is a visual
delight, full of colours and many shots are elegantly composed and lit. On many occasions, lighting changes within a
long take, giving us sharp shadows and intoxicating hues of purple, yellow and
red.
This is also a movie about movement. I would like to think of it as an
intertwining dance between actor and camera.
Storaro captures all the exquisite goodness of the art of tango in this
quite alluring film about a man recovering from an accident who attempts to
direct a piece about tango, after feeling a sense of loss both psychologically
and emotionally.
Directed by Carlos Saura, one of Spanish
cinema's most respected filmmakers, Tango
was shot wholly in Buenos Aires, which have led some critics to label it an
Argentinean film. Starring Miguel Angel
Sola as the man in question, the picture features decent acting performances,
though in this drama-lite movie, the 'performances' of dancers left a more
indelible impression.
Together with the music, some of which
are composed by the great Lalo Schifrin, Tango
becomes an art film about art. However,
there seems to be too much tango, which depending on how you look at it, would
mean glossing over the drama thus rendering the film lightweight, or that it is
simply a 'documentary' about the art.
Saura intentionally makes us aware of the
camera, that he is documenting a live art in action. We see the camera crane roving about in the
dance studio, being reflected in the mirrors and sometimes staring back at
us. It is not so much a meta-film;
rather Saura tries to situate the viewer in a position of omnipresence. He doesn't allow us to create, but to observe
the character/subject and the art of choreography.
The climax is quite breathtaking and
unexpected, ironically reinforcing the idea that Tango is all about drama (of theatrics) through performance (of
choreography), rather than drama (of character and narrative) through
performance (of acting).
Verdict:
Too much tango glossing over the drama makes this visual delight more
lightweight than expected.
GRADE: B (7.5/10 or 3.5 stars)
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