Carlos Saura’s Tango, from 1998, is a backstage musical with a techy overlay and a political undertow. It’s meta this, that and the other, which distracts from the simplicity of what’s on offer to some extent. Which is… an old-fashioned Fred Astaire-style musical. Nothing wrong with a Fred Astaire musical, as long as the dancing is filmed properly, which it is.
Miguel Ángel Solá stars, as the injured director licking his wounds after a recent car accident and relationship break-up with his star dancer, Laura Fuentes (Cecilia Narova). Mario Suárez is now putting together a new show, one that he wants to do his way – political, challenging, artistic – though the money men are trying to railroad him into doing something everyone will “understand”. He flatly refuses.
One of the show’s backers, a gangster, asks Mario if he’ll take a look at a girl he’s been seeing. A favour. Just give her an audition, no need to give her a part if she’s no good etc etc. Except Elena Flores (Mía Maestro) is good, and beautiful, and Mario has soon fallen in love with her, even though he knows that he’s playing with fire.
Sex, desire, danger – the plot apes the grand moves of the tango itself. Aping the fancy footwork is Saura’s construction of the film. One moment we are watching a stage musical, then we’re watching rehearsals, then we catch a glimpse of a camera, as if this might be a documentary, then we seem to be inside the film itself. Suddenly we’re watching a clip from an old tango movie featuring one of the greats. We’re at a dance school for children. Saura keeps sliding us about, often setting his dancers against gigantic illuminated colour screens, which renders them as silhouettes, archetypes.
Listen out for an early, explicatory conversation between Mario and his show’s lighting designer, in which it’s explained that different colours are used to depict different moods, times and places. It is the lighting philosophy of legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who does exactly as described, starting us off in a blood-orange world of heightened emotion (Mario and ex-lover Laura’s break-up scene), before taking us right into the realm of the richest reds as things get very dramatic.
It’s theatrical but it works. Saura and Storaro suggest a flashback with one shift in lighting, switch from rehearsal to the show itself with another, a change of mood from thoughtful to jealous with yet another.
In a way, though, the man to watch is Juan Carlos Copes. The legendary dancer and choreographer who re-invented tango here plays Mario’s choreographer, Carlos Nebbia (he also choreographed the whole thing – you’d expect nothing less). He doesn’t say much but it’s his dancing and choreography that is the main reason to watch rather than Saura’s meta messing about or Storaro’s technical whizzery.
If this were an Astaire musical, Copes would be the Astaire figure, the centre around which it all turned. Saura wants us to focus more on the show’s creative whirlwind, Mario, clearly an avatar for Saura himself. If there’s an argument to be picked with this movie, that’s it right there. Wrong man.
Interestingly, when it comes to Copes and his choreography, Saura bows to the inevitable and as good as admits that, yes, this is an old-fashioned musical – he pulls the camera back so we can see the dancers’ moves, abruptly parks the political and the meta and just revels in the sheer animal physicality of Copes and co (if you have not seen the documentary Our Last Tango, about the much older Copes and his relationship with ex-partner in dance and life María Nieves, it is a cracker).
As for the music, the musicians on screen are the fabulous El Neuvo Quinteto Real, who play with the fluidity of people who have been making music together for a very long time. When it’s not them it’s one of the greats of tango (Astor Piazzolla, Osvaldo Pugliese or Juan de Dios Filiberto, among others) on the soundtrack, with Lalo Schifrin (an Argentinian, it’s often forgotten) filling in beautifully as the official composer.
Lots to like here. Best tango movie ever? Surely a contender.
Tango aka Tango, no me dejes nunca – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
