Danzón (1991)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

María Novaro

Writers:

Beatriz Novaro (writer)
María Novaro (writer)

Release Date:

27 June 1991 (Mexico)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Julia (Rojo) is a phone operator in Mexico City who divides her time between her job, her daughter and...

Plot Keywords:

Dance | Telephone Operator | Feminist | Affair | One Word Title

Awards:

6 wins & 4 nominations

Cast

María Rojo	...	Julia Solórzano
Carmen Salinas	...	Doña Tí
Tito Vasconcelos	...	Susy
Margarita Isabel	...	Silvia
Víctor Carpinteiro	...	Rubén
Cheli Godínez	...	Tere
Daniel Rergis	...	Carmelo
Adyari Cházaro	...	Perla
Blanca Guerra	...	Colorada
César Sobrevals	...	Chucho
Mikhail Kaminin	...	Russian sailor
Rodrigo Gómez	...	Malena
Sergio Colmenares	...	Karla
Ángel de Valle	...	Yadira
Luis Gerardo	...	Juan El Padrote

Runtime:

120 min

Country:

Mexico | Spain

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Argentina:13 | Sweden:Btl | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico

Company:

Fondo de Fomento a la Calidad Cinematográfica

Fails almost completely as a film.

This film can hardly be classified as such. It lacks and visual style to distinguish it from other poorly made melodramas. It's characters are almost all stock, save for Julia, who is the only person the audience is supposed to connect with. However, due to a poor performance by the main actress and a horrifically abstract plot, we are unable to connect in any real way with this woman.

Julia runs off to a city she does not know to find her dance partner, and she does not find him, but she does find a new sort of "family" consisting of a drag queen, a hooker, a no-nonsense hotel manager and a man young enough to be her son who she gets to "know" very well. This would be almost satisfying if the film did not first establish her OTHER family by giving the relationship Julia has with her daughter and her friends at home so much screen time. Maybe the "finding herself and her family" story line would have been effective if the viewer did not already feel that she had these things already. This choice makes the whole film obsolete, and instead of making Julia sympathetic, it makes her seem selfish and also very stupid.

But then there is the ending. She returns home to her first family (after abandoning her found family, just like her dance partner had abandoned her--so had she really grown?)and returns to the dance hall, alone and ready to dance without a partner. This is the one act that showed some bravery (the actually brave kind, not the dumb "I'm running off to a strange city alone to spend all my savings looking for one man" kind). FOr a moment, the viewer is left satisfied thinking that the film is allowing its heroine to grow--but then who should appear but Carmelo, her dance partner. The frame is filled by their passion-less dance for what seems like hours, and the end credits begin to roll. This is a wholly unsatisfying ending for two reasons: 1)The film establishes Carmelo to be kind of a God figure, illusive and unobtainable, the perfect being that Julia is going to such ends to be with, and to show us him is just painful. 2)It negates the rest of the plot. Why did we waste so much time on this journey if she didn't really need to take it? Would Carmelo not have come back if she had not befriended a drag queen? The problems with this movie go beyond plot elements. It is very poorly shot. First time director Navaro (who also edited the film) lets the camera linger for far too long on mostly static objects. This halts the pacing of the film, and it occurs many, many times throughout. There is also an amazing amount of fluid camera movements, pans and tilts from one character to another, to a sign, to a building and then back to another camera. It is nauseating to see.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this film a 1 is that it does show single women of a certain age living in Mexico, and it shows them in a positive light. It does not victimize them as single women so often are in Mexican cinema, but deals with them as people who work, who live and who are independent. But this is just not enough to support a film. As a feminist statement, it makes its point, as an entertaining or engaging film, it fails completely.