But if you just have to experience REALLY BAD CINEMA, your best (worst?) choice
is British filmmaker Sally Potter's The Tango Lesson. Written by Sally
Potter, directed by Sally Potter, choreographed by Sally Potter and starring
Sally Potter, The Tango Lesson is the story of Sally Potter. In The
Tango Lesson, Sally Potter plays Sally Potter, a London screenwriter, film
director, dancer and choreographer making a film called The Tango
Lesson. Well, actually, as the picture opens, Sally Potter is trying to
write and direct a picture called Rage (which is an emotion she does
manage to elicit in this movie), but she's doing a bad job on her script (think
about that!) and decides to distract herself by popping over to Paris for tango
lessons from the world's greatest tango dancer, Pablo Veron (played with
amazing accuracy by Pablo Veron).
So they dance a while. And Pablo Veron is impatient. And Sally Potter jets off
to Argentina to take lessons from some other guys. Man, the British film
industry must pay top pound. Sally Potter gets better, returns to Paris and is
soon performing on stage with Pablo Veron. So they share. And you know what
they discover. They belong to the same religious group. Neither one believes in
God, but it's so special to belong to the same religious group. So they cry.
They are soulmates.
Unfortunately, as a tango dancer, Sally Potter is a thoroughly terrible film
director. And when Pablo Veron tells her so, she teaches him a lesson for being
so cruel (if honest). She determines to put him a movie that she will direct
and therefore have the opportunity to tell him that as an actor, even one
playing himself, he's a sweaty, flashy tango dancer that you keep wanting to
punch in the kisser. And so they make The Tango Lesson, which is all
about everything we've already seen, and dammit if we don't have to watch it
all over again. Yep, when they discover that they belong to the same religious
group, they cry all over again, though neither has found a reason yet to
believe in God. At the end, they dance, and as they dance, Sally Potter breaks
into song. I was so astonished I almost choked laughing.
I will say this, however: The Tango Lesson, an unparalleled exercise in
narcissism, has reaffirmed my faith in God. If there were no God, this film
might have gone on forever here on Earth as it surely does in hell.
--Rick Barton
Full Length Reviews
The Tango Lesson 
The Tango Lesson 
The Tango Lesson 
Capsule Reviews
The Tango Lesson 
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