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| Dancer Upstairs, The |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 133 |
| Public Rating: 7.00 (22 votes) |
Director: John Malkovich |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: drama |
Year: 2002 |
| Writer(s): Nicholas Skakespeare (novel and screenplay) |
| Distributor: Fox Searchlight |
| Reviewed by: Avril Carruthers |
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Produced by Andrés Vicente Gómez
Starring Javier Bardem, Juan Diego Botto, Laura Morante, Elvira Mínguez, Alexandra Lencastre, Oliver Cotton, Luis Miguel Cintra, Javier Manrique, Abel Folk, Marie-Anne Berganza
In a compelling mixture of the heavy, the violent, and the sensual this long movie, set in a Latin American nation and directed by John Malkovich, creates a sense of a society seething with different political agendas. Within this are individuals of integrity or corruption who are either fighting the corruption or furthering it. Violent revolutionary forces add an explosive edge of chaos and uncertain suspense. A romance based on a unity of hearts blooms briefly and dies in an atmosphere of secrecy and mystery.
The novel on which the movie is based concerns the Peruvian Maoist guerrilla group The Shining Path and the nation-wide police search to identify and locate its leader, but the movie does not specify the country nor name the ideological roots of its revolutionaries. In his directorial filmic debut Malkovich’s interest was more in the personal lives of the protagonists than in historical accuracy, and so while much is true, the fiction makes it a more universal story.
Agustín Rejas (Javier Bardem) gives a quietly luminous performance as a lawyer who ironically left the law to “find a more honest way of practising the law” and is now a policeman under the command of corrupt senior police. He is put in charge of the manhunt for Ezequiel, an elusive revolutionary who with equal indifference uses children as unwitting suicide bombers or chickens with bombs tied to their legs and whose terrorist tactics make it unsafe to trust the most innocuous situation. Dead dogs, apparently symbolising the evils of capitalism, are strung up on lampposts with crudely lettered signs attached drawing attention to Ezequiel’s bloody campaign.
Rejas and his team members, Sucre (Juan Diego Botto) and Llosa (Elvira Mínguez) carry persistence to levels of exhaustion in their investigation for clues to Ezequiel. Rejas discovers that five years earlier he had taken the only known picture of him in a routine vehicle check, creating a bond of sorts. There are other links. Rejas’ village priest is shown on videotape being shot and when Rejas goes to investigate he gets an inkling into the wide extent of Ezequiel’s followers from a childhood friend. And in a major plot twist there is another link he doesn’t discover till much later.
Rejas’ wife Sylvina (Alexandre Lencastre) is an exuberant, superficial woman with her mind on fashion, and though it is apparent that Rejas has little in common with her, the marriage is amiable. His pre-adolescent daughter Laura (Marie-Anne Berganza) is another matter and despite the demands of his job Rejas is a conscientious and devoted father. In Laura’s ballet teacher Yolanda, played by fine Italian actress Laura Morante, Rejas senses a deeper complementarity of spirit and the chemistry between them is tangible.
For much of the movie there is a sense of the grinding daily frustration of chasing an elusive and dangerous individual whose secret followers appear to be growing rapidly, while being harried both by dwindling resources and pressure from their own boss and the political forces behind him. The investigators follow cryptic clues in a codebook, a young girl terrorist is tracked down and lies dying of bullet wounds, scorning Rejas’ words of comfort by flinging her own blood at him. Interspersed with this are an avant-garde dance performance in which participants are murdered on stage, and Yolanda’s own yearning dance of freedom, witnessed by Rejas and resonating with his own aesthetic soul.
The mystery of Ezequiel’s identity and whereabouts are gradually uncovered leading to a searing conflict. Amongst diverse political ideologies and corrupt forces on all sides Rejas must decide how to retain his integrity and stay true to his own ideals. By the end, watching Laura dance the same dance as her teacher, there is hope for him that the best of what they have each taught her will persist into the future.
The same song sung by Nina Simone which opened the film, “Who knows where the time goes?” ends it with an enormous pathos which is echoed throughout by Alberto Iglesias’ moving soundtrack.
Malkovich’s penchant for lingering on a sensuous moment, of doing more with the eyes and body than the voice, and of creating an undercurrent of tension which informs the interweaving stories of the protagonists is far more European than Hollywood in style and so there have been critics who found the movie too long and lacking in dramatic tension. For me, however, the paradoxes of beauty and violence; a passion for integrity and personal truth laid against fanaticism and power-mongering create a film of dark beauty and lasting effect.
© Avril Carruthers 10th July 2003
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