Quote from the rottentomatoes synopsis:

For Duvall, the making of Assassination Tango is the culmination of a long-held dream, combining two worlds he loves so much. In the tango, Duvall finds an amalgam of contradictions, which is what makes it so appealing and also parallels his character in the film. “Tango is sweetness. Some people call it sensual. Some call it sexual. Others would disagree because a mother can tango with her son, a father with his daughter. It’s a very personal kind of thrust and a world that’s very special.”

Plot

Buenos Aires. Mario Suárez, a middle-aged theatre director, is left holed up in his apartment, licking his wounds when his girlfriend (and principal dancer) Laura leaves him. Seeking distraction, he throws himself into his next project, a musical about the tango. One evening, while meeting with his backers, he is introduced to a beautiful young woman, Elena, the girlfriend of his chief investor Angelo, a shady businessman with gangster connections. Angelo asks Mario to audition Elena. He does so and is immediately captivated by her. Eventually, he takes her out of the chorus and gives her a leading role. An affair develops between them, but the possessive Angelo has her followed all the time.

The investors are unhappy with some of Mario’s dance sequences. They don’t like a routine which criticises the violent military repression and torture of the past. Angelo has been given a small part, which he takes very seriously. The lines between fact and fiction begin to blur: during a scene in the musical showing immigrants newly arrived in Argentina, two men fight over Elena. She is stabbed. Only slowly do we realise that her death is not for real.

Production

Promoted as the most expensive Argentine film ever made, this production employed theatrical lighting and several cameras shooting simultaneously on a specially constructed set in Buenos Aires. Tango classics alternate with Lalo Schifrin’s score. Famed tango dancers appear onscreen in dark dances depicting passions, sorrows, and the past history of Argentina, including a war ballet, as Saura noted, “We needed a scene that would be brutal, and a ballet that would be violent and aggressive, which we don’t often see in musicals. It frightened me. There was a great deal of tension on the set because some of the dancers had loved ones who had suffered during those years, and the ballet re-creates the terrible feeling of the period. Tango was shown out of competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

Awards

• Nominated for the 1998 Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
• Nominated for the 1998 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
• Winner of the 1998 Goya Award for Best Sound.
• Winner of the Grand Prix Technique de la CST (Vittorio Storaro) at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

Cast

• Miguel Ángel Solá as Mario Suárez
• Mía Maestro as Elena Flores
• Cecilia Narova as Laura Fuentes
• Juan Luis Galiardo as Angelo Larroca
• Juan Carlos Copes as Carlos Nebbia
• Carlos Rivarola as Ernesto Landi
• Sandra Ballesteros as María Elman
• Óscar Cardozo Ocampo as Daniel Stein
• Enrique Pinti as Sergio Lieman
• Julio Bocca as Julio Bocca
• Martín Seefeld as Andrés Castro

The film, a co-production of Argentina, France, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom, was produced by Christopher Sheppard in Britain, and Óscar Kramer in Argentina and was shot mostly in black and white in Paris and Buenos Aires. The soundtrack includes Ástor Piazzolla’s “Libertango.”

Plot

The film tells of Sally (Sally Potter) a filmmaker and screenwriter who is suffering from writer’s block. She’s also dissatisfied with her film project, a murder mystery movie called “Rage” which focuses on the fashion industry. She takes a break and travels to Paris, where she sees the dancer Pablo (Pablo Verón) performing tango.

She becomes obsessed with the dance and offers Pablo a part in her film in exchange for dance lessons. The two become deeply involved as dancers and as lovers, and their emotional intimacy threatens the success of their dancing together.

The film explores the conflict between the woman dancer accepting the man’s lead in the dance, while the man must accept the woman’s lead in the film. It is also a love story, as well as a showcase for Verón’s dancing.

Critical reception

New York Times film critic, Janet Maslin, thought the film was rather simple, and wrote, “Stiffly playing a filmmaker with a growing passion for the tango, [Sally Potter] makes this a handsome, dryly meticulous film with no real fire anywhere beyond its supple dance scenes. The lessons are numbered and cataloged with an obsessive care like that of Peter Greenaway, but this material has little of his corresponding complexity.”

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert discussed in his review the film’s major goal, writing, “Most dances are for people who are falling in love. The tango is a dance for those who have survived it, and are still a little angry about having their hearts so mishandled. The Tango Lesson is a movie for people who understand that difference.”

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle staff critic, lauded the film and the courage of director Potter, and wrote, “British director Sally Potter stuck her neck out when she made The Tango Lesson, a fictionalized account of her relationship with Argentine tango master Pablo Veron…Potter takes what seemed like a recipe for embarrassment and excess and delivers a film that’s sweet and understated and devoid of diva posturing…[the film is] smoothly directed, nicely written and falters only in the performance that Potter was able to squeeze out of herself while performing her multiple tasks.” Yet, Guthmann believes Potter should have casted another actor in her role. He adds, “It’s too bad, then, that Potter couldn’t have figured out a way to use another actress to play herself. She often looks worn out, which makes sense given her offscreen responsibilities but works against her tale of courtship, infatuation and the emotional sparks that fly between two gifted, bullheaded artists.”

Cast

• Sally Potter as Sally
• Pablo Verón as Pablo
• Morgane Maugran as Red Model
• Géraldine Maillet as Yellow Model
• Katerina Mechera as Blue Model
• David Toole as Fashion Designer
• George Yiasoumi as Photographer
• Michele Parent as Seamstress
• Claudine Mavros as Seamstress
• Monique Couturier as Seamstress
• Matthew Hawkins as Bodyguard