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Dance as cultural remembrance and exorcism. The libretto is Federico García Lorca's, Carlos Saura gives it an incantatory reading. Dressing-room mirrors are lit up one by one, the camera lingers on performers absorbed in backstage details (removing snapshots from makeup kits, fastening on wigs) then tries to stare down the flamenco rooster, Antonio Gades, who smokes and puts on mascara and recounts his beginnings in professional choreography. "I really began dancing out of hunger..." The bare rehearsal loft is a sealed-off amphitheater with wall-length mirror and wooden floors to bear the stomping of soles, the performers warm up after confiding in each other their nervousness. ("Don't raise your eyebrows," the instructor states amid spinning pupils.) García Lorca's tale of feuding clans and doomed lovers is a totem of Andalusian macho folklore, melodrama pantomimed during a run-through of the production. "All the way through, no matter what happens." The bride (Cristina Hoyos) leaves the groom (Juan Antonio Jiménez) for her lover, the groom's mother (Pilar Cárdenas) hands the cuckold his blade. Tigerish strides, heavy-lidded glances, rhythmic finger-snapping. Sinuous undulation is the essence of the film's distillation: The betrayed wife's (Carmen Villena) accusation during the matrimonial shivaree consists of a single finger raised wordlessly in a luxuriant arch, Gades' flexing legs and puffed-up chest are made to embody a century of masculine theatricality. "Despierte la novia, despierte..." The ritualized violence from the past is danced to but not easily shed, a persistent Saura theme—the climactic duel is enacted for a languidly circling camera, the figure flanked by the slumped bodies has nothing left but blood on her gown.
--- Fernando F. Croce |