Too much of everything

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It was a fortuitous accident that film evolved into a narrative medium. It could have gone down different paths. It started in the hands of its engineers as simple novelty, quickly abandoned - it seemed there was nothing left to discover. Men from the theater saw it as an opportunity to construct a stage and dazzle with effects. People wanted to be told stories though, deep stories about life, and there was money to be made, so that's where it swung to. We lucked out because erudite minds who wanted to work in the new canvas had to puzzle about how it all amounted to a sort of life, create their paintings or music or philosophy in the midst of life. Film as a language would have been tremendously impoverished without this limitation, which is the same one we encounter in life: there is painting or dance only for someone whose senses they strike with curiosity or desire, who has a past and future life that they enliven, in other words a narrative.So we have here a triumph of this language in its struggle to deliver a richer life than usual.It is about dance, wonderful tango. But it can't be just filmed dance, dance itself is more than bodies to music. It is about desire, age, creativity, passion, loss, meaning; all the great dilemmas of life. But they have to be uncovered as life so there needs to be a narrative framework. We want in both cases to find human subjectivity in the dancefloor of its taking shape.The story around these things is about a director who puzzles about a new show and passion in his life. It starts with him on his desk narrating the film we see. It's followed by a hallucination of a male and female pair dancing in a dark soundstage, an old flame we have just seen walk out of his life and her new man. We have some obvious parallels of course: his eye as the camera, his face superimposed on narrative walls. So the point is that when we return to the soundstage the space is already charged with dimensions of memory and mind, internal space where the urges first come to life.The space itself is marvelous and provides endless opportunities to create mind: blank or colored walls, slides and movie clips, painted skies where figures of history emerge from, endless rows of mirrors. We have of course the filmmaker as the protagonist ruminating on lost friends, cruel politics, senseless war and duty to memory. It's his show after all, the broader film, his space of expression. What's so marvelous though is the conflation of inner life into dance. Desire as seeing and settling on her face among many. Couples dancing. Choreographed order. Piercing gazes locked together in tango. A tension that is both affected and yet real just then. Something inscrutable in the air that can only maybe danced out and never quite figured out more. Dance as looking for union.All through the film we see the show take shape, the slow process. In one particularly evocative scene he blows air into empty dresses and this comes alive as inspiration, and this is followed by her stepping out from behind canvas screens to meet him. Soon there's danger that is foreshadowed for the end, an old boyfriend with possibly mob ties who is also funding the show, his heartbreak and loss mirroring the narrator's.So the violence bubbling in the narrator has been merely postponed, what's the resolution?It ends with the lovers' duel sublimated on the stage between dancers, this was a pivotal scene in one of Saura's previous dance films (flamengo there). The whole scene is a masterstroke. The key players looking, immersed, affected. An implicit tension that may be just the show. The dance ending with a knife's flash. The scorned man gets up and yells as if having her stabbed was a thought or an urge that he regretted only too late. (Saura could have made it more clear that the dancer who stabs her was also one of the funder's men, earlier he is seen escorting the girl to a car that has come to pick her up). At this point it may seem like a trivial setup: reality shown to be fiction.But the point is, as all of them walk out of the stage together, reconciled, enthusiastic, casually exchanging words, that all this emotional drama and hurt that was foreshadowed is seen with more distance to be a trivial fiction, an appearance on a stage, an illusion. Wonderful Spanish sensibility.The last shot in context is one of the greatest I've seen, a Marienbad tracking shot through empty space towards glass, tentative reflection that engulfs our vision. Storraro excels all through the film, but here he surpasses himself. It's seen here as clearly as anywhere else that the film is in the company of Resnais, not Bob Fosse.Something to meditate upon.

In Buenos Aires, the director Mario Suarez (Miguel Ángel Solá) is developing and rehearsing a tango play with historical events as background. Mario misses his mate Laura Fuentes (Cecilia Narova), who has recently left him, and is recovering from a car crash with an injured leg. When the major investor Angelo Larroca (Juan Luis Galiardo) asks for an audition for his lover Elena Flores (Mía Maestro), she succeeds and participates in the play; however, Mario falls in love for her and Elena fears the dangerous Angelo.I saw "Tango" for the first time on 01 January 2001; I have just watched it again and I still believe it is one of the most wonderful tributes to the tango. Carlos Saura uses the concept that history is indestructible and recalls the dark years of military dictatorship in Argentina after the amnesty entwined with a passionate love of a middle-aged man for a young woman to build the plot, supported by stunning cast, choreography, music score and lighting. However, the conclusion is confused and disappointing, and I really do not understand the relationship of Angelo and Mario acting like pals in the last scene. Cecilia Narova and Mía Maestro are extremely beautiful and fantastic dancers, and I do not get tired of seeing them dancing tango. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Tango"

I absolutely love this film. I am not a huge fan of dance movies or musicals, but this creation is superb. The music, the dancing, and of course, the women are all beautiful. Saura melds fiction & reality with all the skill he has shown in previous films, & Storaro's cinematography is, as usual, stunning. I purchased a DVD copy as soon as it became available & I have found the extras & the commentaries to be both informative & entertaining.For anyone who loves; beautiful filming making, passionate dancing or erotic women, this film will fill all those needs. Buenos Aires, here I come!

The dancing in this movie was wonderful to watch. The posture of the dancers amazing. The colours magnificent. I found the tale fascinating. I believe what we watched was the film being made and the story told was what the director wanted us to see, because at the end, everyone was clapping and all were friendly.It was all make believe. The tale was not to be taken seriously, it was a play within a play.On the otherhand what happened in Argentina many years ago was true and the way the director directed this sad time was very inventive. It showed through dancing the tragic story.