Stars: Miguel Angel Sola, Cecilia Narova, Mia Maestro, Carlos Rivarola

Director: Carlos Saura

Summary: The story of a director's passionate love affair with his work and a beautiful woman.

In Carlos Saura's TANGO, a well-known theater director, Mario (Miguel Angel Sola) attempts to produce a tango extravaganza in Argentina. He wants to show the breadth and depth of tango--both the music and the dance--not just in isolated music and dance numbers, but with a story that shows the way the tango is woven into the very fabric of Argentinean life. Mario is beset with problems in his personal life and interference from political officials that prohibit him from making the film. His wife has just left him for another man. He falls in love with a beautiful young dancer, Elena (Mia Maestro), but after very brief fling she dumps him. The Mayor wants him to put his mistress in the show and, along with the producers, wants him to cut a sequence that dramatizes the horrors of the time of the military dictatorship and the plight of the families of the "disappeared." In a voice-over Mario reveals the depth of his feelings about art and love while also expressing his severe self-doubt.
After a beautiful opening shot of the city of Buenos Aires, director of photography Vittorio Storaro, who had previously collaborated with Saura on FLAMENCO, infuses the large sound stage, where the film takes place, with brilliant pastel screens and sharp silhouettes. In TANGO Saura effectively blends the personal drama that goes into theater production with the beauty of the final dance sequences.

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Sally Potter's self-reflective film stars Potter (an actress and the director of Orlando), more or less as herself, learning to tango from master-dancer Pablo Veron and considering making a film called The Tango Lesson. The film that we happen to be watching, however, is concerned largely with the delicious conflict between the politics of tango--the need for one partner, typically the woman, to yield to the other--and the expectations of the film-maker to do things on her own terms. Can Potter simultaneously surrender and control for the duration of this circular project? The question is made more complicated by Veron's desire to be in one of Potter's films--in other words, to follow her lead. Potter may not be Veron's equal on the dance floor, but that isn't the point of this interesting movie and its provocative, internal debate. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	Spanish
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Interactive Menus, Scene Access, Cast And Crew Filmographies
Subtitles:	English
Year:	1998
Release Date:	April 21, 2003
Runtime:	110 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	M T D 5010
Keywords:	Subtitled, General, Wide, Screen, Tango, Spanish, Drama
Genre:	Drama