Other Titles • The Tango Lesson • La Lección de tango (1997) • La Leçon De Tango (1998)
Synopses for The Tango Lesson (1997)
1.
In this semi-autobiographical love story, an English director, Sally (Sally Potter), in Paris preparing to make a commercial film that her Hollywood producers have dubbed "Carnage on the Catwalk," wanders into a tango performance. Smitten with the dance, and the dancer, she asks Pablo (Pablo Veron) to give her a lesson. Returning to London to find her contractor (Heathcote Williams) tearing up her floor, she embarks on a pilgrimage to Buenos Ares to seriously learn the tango from two amiable teachers, Gustavo (Gustavo Naveira) and Fabian (Fabian Salas). With her London flat in worse shape than ever, she flees to Paris, reuniting with Pablo. Drawn together by their love of the tango and shared Jewish heritage, their romance blossoms and Sally abandons her film project. When Pablo asks her to be his dance partner in an upcoming concert, and she asks him to be in her next film--inspired by the tango--it puts their relationship to the test. Beautifully filmed in black and white with color sequences, THE TANGO LESSON is filled with inspired choreography and captivating dance sequences, including one in which Sally and Pablo are dancing along the Seine in Paris ala Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS.
2.
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
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