Tango (1998 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tango, whose full title is Tango, no me dejes nunca, is a 1998 film written and directed by Carlos Saura. It is set in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

[edit] Cast

Miguel Ángel Solá as Mario Suárez
Cecilia Narova as Laura Fuentes
Mía Maestro as Elena Flores

[edit] Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

As in so many of Saura's films, the basic psychological love triangle is transplanted to a new arena, here not that of Carmen, nor of Lorca, but of the director of a production, as in Flaminco, but now a production in Argentina that will courageously and with great impact take up a number of powerful historical themes, from the landing of may immigrants, covered movingly by the soundtrack with Verdi's "Va Pensiero...", itself recalling historical themes of rebellion to be taken up when a danced representation of the Junta's repression is enacted. There is less dancing than usual in Saura's films--perhaps the tango idiom is less familiar, though he clearly has experts to work with, and the focus , for instance on the foot tracing catlike its path on the floor has the flavor of a point newly inclulcated, and yet is appropriate, and not the amateur mistake made by many dance filmakers of concentrating the camera only on the feet or legs, which misses the whole point of the dance coming from the dancer's center, which in the genius and particular passion of tango contradicts Kleist's point about dancers in Über das Marionettentheater that grace is lost when the heat is on, and which point Saura both makes and conditions by showing the heat to be at the end finally artifice--except for, perhaps him, the impressario in the movie and real life--is he or the audience ever quite sure these are disentangled, or a permanent gauncho between him, his persona and his Pygmalion, frozen Laocoonlike in the lake of his psyche.