`Tango is like chess for your feet' Sally Potter claimed during the publicity for this, a film that she wrote, directed, and starred in as a tango dancing director called - strangely enough - Sally. Like the screen Sally, the real Potter also learned from Pablo Veron, also her co-star. If only the film was as cogent and searching as her intelligent definititon of a fascinating dance!
As a keen tango dancer myself, I was eager to see the committed to celluloid the intricacies of a dance which is part improvisational game, part physical conversation, and as much an exercise for the mind as for the body. A lot of work goes into becoming an excellent and effortless `tanguista', and there is much more to tango than most people realise.
Turning her story into a roman a clef, does not make it experimental or postmodern, as appears to have be intended, but in fact regresses to the self-referential musicals of yesteryear such as `Singing in the Rain'. As long as there has been art, there has been art about art, and art about creative blocks. Though such an approach can create masterpieces (such as Fellini's 8 1/2), it can also create ponderous excuses for not creating original art.
Worse still, it can come off as an act of monstrous narcissism. Potter is a stunning dancer, and it is understandable that she wished to play the main role on that count, but in all other respects she is merely adequate (and her singing, in the final scene, quite inadequate). Potter berates Veron in the film for not trusting her to be lead by him; by not trusting another actor to play her part, Potter is doing exactly the same thing.
Thus the film plays out like a rather dull overheard conversation that one might idly listen to on the bus but not miss once you reached your stop. Tango is a dance in which the female must follow unquestioningly, adding little of her own input, occasionally stepping back to let the alpha male shine. The tensions that this has with a woman who is a film director and feminist, used to leading and guiding, rebelling against traditional roles of male and female, might have been fascinating. Instead, it all seems a playful act of revenge against Pablo: in film, she gets to lead, not him.
Though tantalising ideas leap out from time to time (the influence the tango had on her creativity is something touched upon but unfortunately not explored), and as always her visuals are sumptuous, I found the film a disappointment overall.
