|
Bit 1
|
There is an intriguing moment near the end of The Player where the
Hollywood executive played by Tim Robbins receives an anonymous phone call.
It is a writer, calling with an idea for a film. Indeed, the very idea for
The Player itself. This is a moment in which the film punctures the purely
representational realm of cinema and enters the real, since as viewers, we
are left to wonder if what we are watching came to be filmed by virtue of
the very events we have just witnessed.
|
|---|
|
Bit 2
|
A similar sense of doubled reality runs through Sally Potter's latest
directorial offering, The Tango Lesson. Unlike her critically
regarded film Orlando, though, Potter doesn't just direct. In this film she acts
and writes as well, which is curious since that is exactly what the film
is all about.
|
|---|
|
Bit 3
|
The story is uncomplicated. Potter plays herself, a filmaker in search of
inspiration for the development of her latest project: an idea that
explores the media's role in the death of beauty. Outward curiosity leads
her to a tango competition in Paris and soon she is taking lessons with one
of its leading proponents, the dancer Pablo Veron, who also plays himself
in the film. Their relationship quickly becomes complicated. She wants his
beauty, and in her, he sees a path to fame through a future film project.
|
|---|
|
Bit 4
|
Amid exquisite dance scenes, which are amongst the best I've ever seen on
film, their relationship see-saws in an exchange of power that is actually
the search for a perfect seduction, a point in the relationship where no
party receives more than the other, where each act is a gift that will be
requited. When Potter decides to abandon her original film project in what
is a hilarious piss-take on Hollywood, she turns to the tango for her next
film project. This further complicates her relationship with Veron, since
he is the key to her subject.
|
|---|
|
Bit 5
|
The subtext in all this at once suggests a battle between the sexes, a
struggle for power, but what results is indeed the perfect seduction for
which they strove: they need each other for the project. Thus it is apt
that the film closes with a hesitant kiss, perhaps the most seductive
gesture of all, a gesture through which both parties yield and yet
simultaneously empower themselves.
|
|---|
|
Bit 6
|
This final moment of seduction is the very gesture that has allowed the
film to come about, so in a sense it was predetermined. To support the
doubling sense of 'the real' created through all this, Potter has shot the
film in a stark black and white, using a grainy texture and 'objective'
mise-en-scène not unlike neo-realism as a signifier of 'the real'. Against
this, she uses bold colours to signify the imaginary during the scenes
where she is conceiving her initial film project.
|
|---|
|
Bit 7
|
Those scenes only emphasise the sense of 'the real' connoted by the black and
white. They allow the black and white to open up a sense of reality, which
is further supported by a suspicion that everything in the film actually
took place so that the film could come into being, as if the symbolic order
was open and awaiting its arrival. In fact, the entire film seems like a
declaration that a letter always arrives at its destination. Only Potter
does not offer us the envelope: she bares its entire contents.
|
|---|
| |
Bit 8
|
Details
The Tango Lesson, by Sony Pictures Classics, 1997.
Writer/Director: Sally Potter.
Cinematography: Robby Müller.
Cast: Sally Potter, Pablo Veron.
|
|---|
| |
Bit 9
|
Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Josh Milani. "Playing on 'The Player': Sally Potter's 'The Tango Lesson'." M/C Reviews 15 Dec. 1998.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/tango.html>.
Chicago style:
Josh Milani, "Playing on 'The Player': Sally Potter's 'The Tango Lesson'," M/C Reviews 15 Dec. 1998,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/tango.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Josh Milani. (1998) Playing on 'The Player': Sally Potter's 'The Tango Lesson'. M/C Reviews 15 Dec. 1998.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/tango.html> ([your date of access]).
|
|---|
|
|
![[image]](http://movies.yahoo.com/images/movies/guide/00991601.jpg)