Tango
Tango is a 1998 tango film written and directed by Carlos Saura with camerawork by acclaimed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. The film, an Argentine and Spanish production, received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Foreign Language Film.
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