Change Your Image
weredaleboy
Reviews
Take the Lead (2006)
It would have been nice if the film had actually let the dancers take the lead....
Why is it that a movie about dance feels the need to justify itself with its vanilla approach to the problems facing urban youth? The supposedly moral point of this film is so heavy-handed and based on so many stereotypes that you wind up not caring about these characters at all. If only the screenwriters could have simplified things to the point where the film becomes one about kids who really want to learn to dance, then you would have really had something. These are good dancers--and we don't need supposedly gritty urban street scenes or pretentiously stuck-up ballroom snobs (I have been in ballroom for years, and I haven't met anyone who is as snobbish as Morgan--she sounds like she just stepped out of a Beverly Hills 90210 script) to carry the film. Just let these guys dance, and let them talk about their *real* feelings and aspirations, making drama out of what people really say and do rather than out of the ham handed moment where the street kid decides to redeem his brother's memory by not continuing the cycle. And for the record, if someone had admitted to me that he had shot my brother, I'd kill the s.o.b sometime later and very quietly and then make him disappear but good. Get real and let people dance! Of course I respect the decision to focus on the aspirations of Pierre Dulaine, but the movie isn't really about him either. Maybe that's the problem--the film wants to be about so many different characters that it is really finally about none. The dance sequences don't need to be cut in the way that they are--it's almost as if Friedlander is a little worried that she'll lose her audience if she just points the camera at the dancers and lets it role. But the film features really good dancers like Dante Basco and Marcus Paulk, not to mention Katya Virshilas. Creative editing is fine if you're Hitchcock, or doing a Bond movie or whatever. Dance films require more trust of a director in her actor/dancers to hold an audience's attention. Let them rock n roll.
Tango (1998)
A film about Argentina, memory, and the future told through the language of dance
This is a visually stunning film which is a reflection on Argentina and its history, film-making, the connections between the past and the future, and of course Argentina's great tradition of dance. To bring it all together and make it personal, the through-line concerns a film director's budding romance with a young dancer he has discovered following his traumatic split with a legendary dancer. But that's one element of the film only, and not necessarily its most important element. The film tells us of Argentine history, the prevalence, and even the reemergence of its archetypal themes through the generations, romance, passion, freedom, repression, violence, hope--all told in the language of the tango.
The cinematography is first-rate, the overlapping narrative elements (the love story, the story of film-making and its struggles, the story of Argentina in the 20th century, and the story of dance itself) is engaging. But the real reason to see this film is the dancing, which is quite simply stunning. Among the cast are dancers legendary not only in Argentina, but across the world. Mia Maestro, who plays the young up-and-coming dancer, has the exhilarating but probably terrifying job of dancing among all these professionals. While her own dance training is not as extensive as the men and women she dances with, however, she does a really wonderful job in her own dancing scenes--and only someone with significant dance experience will be able to spot the differences between her and the professional dancers.
In some ways, though, even these differences make sense in the context of the story. Elena is the young dancer, and part of the drama that Saura presents is her own evolution in the tango. As she learns more, she becomes more alive to her history and her identity. Her dancing deepens throughout the film.
And if you don't want to learn to dance the Argentine tango after you have seen this film, then you have no soul. Many thumbs up!