Adios Buenos Aires: Last Tangos in Argentina

Never refer to a bandoneon as an accordion. You’d be barred from entering Argentina. The smaller bellows instrument makes every melody sound beautiful and sad. Unfortunately, nothing is sadder than a depression, which had been the reality of the Argentinean economy for three years and counting in late 2001. Julio Farber has had enough, so he is immigrating to Germany with his mother and daughter. However, he has yet to break the bad news to his tango band. Despite the chaos of the Argentinazo riots, saying goodbye is hard to do in German Kral’s Adios Buenos Aires, which is now playing in New York.

Farber and his bandmates love the music, but they live off their day jobs. Their last gig only earned them a dozen empanadas, but since this is Argentina, at least they were probably delicious empanadas. After their latest vocalist quits, they try to recruit the legendary but long-retired Ricardo Tortorella as his replacement. He turns them down unequivocally when they visit his nursing home, but then arrives right on time for their first rehearsal.

Farber is hoping to liquid his assets quickly, including the car a rookie cab driver soon runs off the road, into an embankment. Of course, when Farber tracks down Mariela Martinez through her company, she admits she is uninsured. However, he allows her to pay for the damages in installments, once he recognizes how hard she works for her young deaf son. In the meantime, Martinez agrees to chauffeur Farber and his bandmates to all their gigs, so she soon gets to know them all quite well.

Indeed, meeting the band’s prickly personalities is one of the film’s greatest pleasures. The piano player, Carlos Acosta, is obsessed with numbers in a way that often gives rise to compulsive gambling. Tito Godoy is the bass player and neighborhood mechanic, who has cannibalized more parts from Farber’s wrecked car than he has fixed. Atilio Fernandez is a retired history professor, whose leftist sensibilities are inflamed by the economic crisis, even though it was the Peronistas and their ilk that got the country in its current mess.

Kral has a keen affinity for tango, having previously helmed the documentary, Our Last Tango. However, the film also vividly recreates the anarchy and anxiety of the Argentinazo era. Savvy viewers will be expecting the government’s notoriously draconian limits on bank withdrawals, so every time Farber deposits the proceeds from the sale of his assets, the pit in their stomachs will tighten. Watching the mayhem that plays out in the banks and on the streets helps explain why Argentina just elected Javier Milei, arguably the most libertarian head of state ever. Considering what the Peronistas and their various splinter parties have wrought, who wouldn’t want to try something completely different?

Yet, Kral quite deftly balances the real-life political and economic disorder with the music and the bittersweet romantic comedy. The mutual attraction that blossoms between Martinez and Farber is never driven by cute contrivances. More than anything, their shared experiences as single parents lead to sympathy and understanding.

Every significant role is perfectly cast, starting with the romantic leads, Diego Cremonesi and Marina Bellati, who develop a sweetly shy and believably awkward chemistry together. Mario Alarcon plays the great Tortorella with elegant dignity and poignant sadness. Carlos Portaluppi, Rafael Spregelburd, and Manuel Vicente are colorfully crusty as Farber’s bandmates. They get a lot of laughs kvetching, but there is a good deal of wisdom in their banter. They also look convincing holding their instruments. That is especially true for Cremonesi wiedling the bandoneon.

Tango Shalom: From the Bologna Family

Tango is a little bit sad and a whole lot romantic. Rabbi Moshe Yehuda should be able to relate to it. He is still very much in love with his wife Raquel, but they have recently found themselves strapped for cash. A lucrative dance contest might offer a solution, but his faith prohibits him from touching a woman who is not his wife. Rabbi Yehuda seeks guidance from advisors inside and outside his faith in Gabriel Bologna’s Tango Shalom, which is now playing in New York and Los Angeles.

It seems like everyone in Yehuda’s family needs money from him at the same time, but his teaching just isn’t bringing any in. He even ventures out from his Crown Heights neighborhood in search of paid employment, but to no avail. However, he stumbles across Viviana Nieves’ dance studio. Even though he never tangoed before, he has no trouble picking up the steps through the plate glass window. Nieves is so impressed she invites him in for an unconventional touchless lesson.

Can you believe Yehuda has such natural rhythm Nieves would invite him to be her partner when her ex-lover dumps her at the last minute? Why not? We buy into more outlandish gimmicks all the time, but it will be more difficult for the Orthodox Yehuda to accept it. When he seeks the counsel of the Grand Rebbe, his advice is more than a bit confusing, but it does not completely shut the door on the contest. As he wrestles with the issue, the Rabbi encounters the kindly Father Anthony, the strict but respectful Imam Ahmed, and the playful traveling Hindu mystic Ravi Prajna. Each has something helpful to tell Yehuda, but Prajna might have a solution to his dilemma (which is actually kind of clever).

Tango Shalom is definitely a family affair, for both the Bolognas and Laniados. Gabriel Bologna directs a screenplay, co-written by his instantly recognizable late father Joseph (who co-stars as Father Anthony), with brothers Jos and Claudio Laniado, who portray Moshe Yehuda and his younger brother Rahamim. Plus, Joseph Bologna’s longtime wife (and writing partner) Renee Taylor portrays Moshe’s elderly mother, Deborah Yehuda, while Jos Laniado’s daughter Justine plays his on-screen daughter Shira. In addition, Gabriel Bologna’s wife Zizi composed some of the score. Even the longtime Bologna family friend Lanie Kazan (who co-starred with Joe in My Favorite Year) gets into the act as Leah Zlotkin, Rahamim’s prospective mother-in-law.

All the family connections might make the cynical among us suspicious, but in this case, it leads a good deal of on-screen chemistry. This is definitely a family- and faith-friendly movie that has malice towards none and charity for all. Yet, its spirit of inter-faith fellowship actually makes it rather distinctive in the current marketplace. The humor can be a bit goofy, in a G-rated kind of way, but the tango is legit, thanks to Karina Smirnoff (from Dancing with the Stars). Of course, she is appropriately elegant on the dance floor, but she’s not bad in her dramatic scenes with her Orthodox partner. This might be a family film, but the tango choreography does not water-down the sultriness of the dance.

Our Last Tango: Staying True to the Dance

They were like the Vernon and Irene Castle of tango, except at the height of their success they were divorced and barely on speaking terms. María Nieves and Juan Carlos Copes were the toast of Broadway as the lead dancers of the original 1985 production of Tango Argentino and the 1999 revival, but their backstage relationship was rather frosty. Yet, despite the betrayals and resentments, they always stayed true to the dance. German Kral invites the legendary dance partners to take stock of their lives and careers in Our Last Tango (trailer here), executive produced by Pina filmmaker Wim Wenders, which opens this Friday in New York.

Copes and Nieves first met in the sort of tango milonga that used to be at the center of social life for Argentina’s working class. Ironically, tastes were changing just as the couple’s skills reached their peak. However, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Sort of using jazz as a template, Copes moved tango from the dance floor to the stage, presenting it as national art form. It worked well enough to get Tango Argentino mounted on Broadway, but by that time he was married to someone younger than Nieves.

Both dancers reflect on their time together, but Nieves clearly gets more screen time (reportedly, Copes temporarily withdrew from the project at his current wife’s insistence, so he has nobody to blame except himself). Nevertheless, Kral keeps the film reasonably even-handed. Clearly, their relationship is too complicated to be reduced down to a few soundbites. Indeed, the extraordinarily talented and photogenic dancers who play Nieves and Copes in dramatic re-enactments (Ayelen Álvarez Miño being a particular standout) do their best to understand and forgive the failings of their characters in conversations that give Last Tango a slightly meta, deeply humane vibe.

There is a fair amount of archival footage of Copes and Nieves as an established act, but some of their most important dances happened before that. Kral integrates those recreations quite smoothly, giving the film an expressionistic feeling. Years of their lives are essentially papered over, but the essence is vividly captured on screen. Eventually, it all builds towards a reunion between the two dancers, but it is almost an anti-climax following the eighty-year-old Copes’ show-stopping feature-spot.

Last Tango is loaded with wonderfully evocative dance numbers, lensed by cinematographers Jo Heim and Félix Monti with the romantic style tango demands. Arguably, it is one of the most visually lush music-related docs since Calle 54, ranking alongside the dance films of Carlo Saura, even with the emotionally charged interview segments. It is an exquisitely sophisticated, deeply satisfying film that deserves to become a word-of-mouth hit. Very highly recommended, Our Last Tango opens this Friday (4/15) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

ADIFF ’14: Tango Negro

Anyone with a little bit of jazz, blues, and Afro-Cuban music under their belts, should be ready to accept the notion that most music with a real rhythmic kick has the “Same Mother,” to quote the title of Jason Moran’s deep blues influenced 2004 release. Yet, they seem to have trouble with the idea in Argentina and Uruguay. Parisian expatriate tango-jazz pianist Juan Carlos Cáceres returns to his native Argentina to promote awareness of the music’s African origins in Dom Pedro’s Tango Negro: the African Roots of Tango (trailer here), which screens during the 2014 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

Blessed with incredible technique, Cáceres has become a leading expert on tango, especially its earliest manifestations. As in Brazil and many other Latin American countries, great numbers of African slaves were brought to Argentina against their will. Retaining elements of their pre-bondage culture, they developed musical forms not so very different from Cuban rumba. However, subsequent waves of overwhelmingly white immigration from Europe would radically change the country’s demographics. Just as the composition of Argentina changes, so too did the character of tango.

Frankly, it is hard to fathom how this could be controversial because it seems so self-evident. By the same token, one could argue the film does not give European immigrants proper credit for making tango what it is today. It is an elegant form of music and dance wholly distinct from traditional Afro-Cuban forms. Arguably, the description of tango quoted in the film as the synthesis of three sadnesses, as experienced by the immigrant, the gaucho, and the disenfranchised African gets at the essence in a fully inclusive way.

There are some enjoyable performances in TN, including features spots for Cáceres and various neo-traditional ensembles. It makes a logical cinematic pairing with Arístides Falcón Paradí’s Rumba Clave Blen Blen Blen, but it is more self-consciously pursuing a mission, whereas RCBBB is more interested in celebrating musical camaraderie. (If you only see one of the music docs at the festival, chose the rumba, because camaraderie is more fun.)

TN offers some nice music and solid scholarship, but it sees more opposition to its case than the audience does. Regardless, if you want to hear tango performed with uncharacteristic percussion, it is the film for you. Recommended for tango enthusiasts, Tango Negro screens this Friday (12/5) and the following Tuesday (12/9) as part of this year’s ADIFF New York.

Rashevski’s Tango

Family is where most people first learn their religious identity and cultural traditions. The Rashevski family was long dominated by their powerful matriarch Rosa, a secular Jewish Holocaust survivor who loved the tango. With her passing, the Rashevskis suddenly find themselves reevaluating their assumptions, like just how Jewish they really are, in Belgian filmmaker Sam Garbarski’s Rashevski’s Tango (trailer here), which opens Friday in New York.

After the horror of the concentration camps, Rosa and her brother-in-law Dolpho essentially turned their backs on religion. By contrast, her husband Sammy embraced Judaism, leading to an irreparable breach with the Rashevski family. Though the faithful Dolpho tries to bring him to Rosa’s deathbed, Sammy (now an Orthodox Rabbi in Israel) refuses. After her death, the family receives shocking news—the secular Rosa bought a plot in the Jewish cemetery.

As a result, the Rashevskis, whose past observances of faith were almost exclusively reserved for Passover, start to question their Jewishness. Rosa’s sons Simon and David never gave religious identity much thought. Simon married a Christian wife, Isabelle, but told her not to convert, claiming it would never satisfy those who might object. Their daughter Nina decides she can only marry a Jewish man, even though she is not truly Jewish herself. Antoine, a friend of her rebellious brother Jonathan, seriously considers converting to win her heart, which would technically make him more Jewish than her. As for David’s son Ric, after serving in the Israeli Defense Force, he now pines for Kadijah, the immigrant Muslim girlfriend who dumped him.

Altogether, it is hardly surprising the Rashevskis are experiencing a minor religious identity crisis. At least they all still have tango as they grapple with their faith and conflicting emotions at important family gatherings, like funerals, weddings, and the first Seder Dinner following Rosa’s death.

Garbarski and co-writer Phillippe Blasband create largely credible family situations, except for the awkward Ric-and-Kadijah romance, which feels like an artificial subplot merely tacked on to give the film politically correct appeal. Still, most of the relationships are sharply written and nicely fleshed out by a talented ensemble cast.

In particular, Michel Jonasz and Daniel Mesguich nicely capture the dynamics of two grown brothers with years of shared history between them. Jonathan Zaccai also brings out unexpected depth in Simon’s grizzled son Jonathan, while as his comrade Antoine, Hippolyte Girardot supplies an easy charm and a bit of welcome dry humor in a mostly serious film.

Tango is a thoughtful family drama that does not shy away from its moments of pain and uncertainty. Despite the occasional use of stock characters, Garbarski avoids outright caricatures, dealing with the Rashevskis’ issues of faith with considerable honesty. It opens in New York this Friday (9/11) at Cinema Village.

Music for Counterfeiters

The Counterfeiters: Music from the Motion Picture
Milan Records

This year’s Oscar nominated original scores were a particularly dreary, unremarkable lot. Perhaps the most effect movie music of the year was actually ineligible, as a good portion was not originally composed for the film. While Marius Ruhland did compose some original themes and cues, the soundtrack of The Counterfeiters, winner of the Academy Award for best foreign language film, is dominated by the haunting tangos of Hugo Diaz.

Director Stefan Ruzowitzky happened to have the music of the Argentinean harmonica player recommended to him while he was making the film and thought it was a perfect fit for the lead character, Salomon Sorowitch, based on the real-life Salomon Smolianoff. It seemed particularly fitting because Smolianoff actually relocated to Argentina sometime after his liberation from the camp.

Sorowitch is a survivor and a man of the underworld. As a result, he never wears his emotions on his sleeve. As played by Karl Markovics, Sorowitch brings to mind a lightweight boxer, maintaining a shrewdly cold exterior, while projected to sense of potential danger. However, despite his criminal success, he remains Jewish, subject to all the same German prejudices and hatreds every Jew in straight society must endure. The tango themes associated with his character tap into that sense of sorrow that a character like Sorowich refuses to outwardly express. The music of Diaz actually helps Markovics establish the interior turmoil of the steely counterfeiter. They also contribute to the appropriately modest emotional pay-off granted through the film’s framing sequences. In short, Diaz’s music makes the film better.

Diaz in fact, should be better known in America. He was a master of many forms of Argentinean music, not simply the tango, and was a friend jazz harmonica players like Toots Thielemans and Larry Adler. Each of his selected performances has an elegantly stark beauty, with “Man a Mano” and “Silencio” being perfect introductory and concluding themes, respectively.

Of Ruhland’s themes, most are of the emotional helper variety, perfectly effective in the film, but not so interesting independently. Probably the foreboding “Burger’s Secret” holds up on its own the most successfully, but it is hardly required listening.

The balance of the selections consists of the light operetta records so beloved by the National Socialists, which they would actually play for the counterfeiters as a form of positive reinforcement. Whatever their relative merits, knowing the privileged position some of these artists held under the regime leaves one cold to hear them now. For instance, Belgian tenor Marcel Wittrisch, here represented with “Nur fur Natur” and “Wei Mein Ahnl Zwanzig Jahr,” also recorded something called “God Bless Our Fuhrer.” However, within the context of the film on-screen, the chosen selections work effectively.

Counterfeiters is a great film, highly recommended. After seeing it, the tangos of Diaz probably sound even better, whereas the opposite is true for the operetta. Even apart from post-viewing reactions, the soundtrack CD is a mixed bag stylistically. However, Diaz’s tangos are a highlight that will hopefully reach a wider audience now.