Flamenco

Showcasing different styles and generations, and featuring 500 dancers, singers and guitarists from all walks of flamenco life (from Joaquín Cortés down), Saura's film is both an exciting document of a thriving Spanish art form and a boring documentary. Technically, it's dazzling. The setting, Seville's Plaza de Armas (a converted station), is revealed through Vittorio Storaro's cool, translucent rays of orange light suggesting the movement from dusk to dawn; there are mirrors, white panels, silhouettes. Surprising, then, that a film celebrating flamenco as a popular affair should offer so little contextualisation - and no subtitles - to a non-Spanish-speaking audience. Who are these people? What is this dance about? It's a valid artistic decision and preferable to cock-eyed translation, but what it gains in purity over most of Saura's other films, it loses in accessibility.