Naked Tango

1924. Sailing to Buenos Aires, tired of her ageing, possessive husband (Rey), Stephanie (May) impulsively exchanges identities with a suicide. The girl gone overboard was a mail-order bride, and Stephanie - now Alba - happily marries handsome Jewish groom Zico (Morales), only to find herself enslaved in a hellish world of prostitution, sexual abuse and murderous violence presided over by her hubby's underworld chum Cholo (D'Onofrio). As ever in such films, the heroine both abhors and comes to adore her captor-tormentor, mainly because of his passion for, and expertise in, the tango. The directing debut of screenwriter Leonard Schrader (brother of Paul) may be a slick study in baroque set design, costume and lighting; but the script's stilted clichés serve only to turn what was evidently intended as a homage to the films of Valentino and Louise Brooks into a sexist fantasy so inept it comes over as camp parody.