The Tango Lesson

While working on a thriller, British film-maker Sally Potter attends a Parisian dance recital by Pablo Verón, and is so entranced that she asks him to give her tango lessons. As time passes, her obsession with the music, the dance and her teacher becomes all consuming. She abandons her script to improve her skills as a dancer, and to prepare a movie about tango featuring herself and Verón. On one level, it's simply a terrific dance movie. On another, it offers a canny analysis of male-female relationships, with tango functioning as a model for the interrogation of power, passion, independence and cultural difference. And, inspired by writer/directer Potter's real life experiences, Potter, Verón and most of the cast play 'versions' of themselves, allowing the movie to explore the fertile no man's land between reality and fiction. Though some may find Potter's cinematic presence a little 'cool' in terms of charisma and dramatic range, there's no denying that her partnering of Verón and others on the dance floor is both skilful and exhilarating.