Argentina
Matthew Paluch
If by the end of a show you’ve both wowed and ouched out loud, I would declare it’s safe to say you’re getting your money's-worth. Tango Fire's new show at the Peacock Theatre, Flames of Desire, does all the above and more. In fact it could be described as the West End equivalent to a supermarket deal the average savvy consumer simply can’t resist – three for the price of one: exquisite dancers, a charismatic chanteur, and an electrifying band.The dancers are 10 of Argentina’s best, headed by the dancer/in-house choreographer German Cornejo. The singer, Jesus Hidalgo, has the charm and Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Argentine Celina Murga’s two feature films to date, Ana and the Others and A Week Alone, mark her out as one of the most original voices in a country chock full of talent. Those films are concerned with individuals – respectively, a young woman and a group of children – in search of an identity, in a society that is giving them little direction. Her first documentary, Escuela normal, investigates this question at source.Murga follows the day-to-day chaos of a provincial high school, buckling under the weight of too few teachers and resources, and far more kids than the building can bear Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
With Euro 2012 about to end and the Olympics looming, we'll be hearing an awful lot of national anthems over the next couple of months. Don't we all agree that the majority of them are inadequate - often being turgid tunes with no reference to the culture of the countries involved? Isn't it about time we had some alternatives? Here are a few suggestions.United KingdomAnthem: God Save the QueenThe obvious alternative for Team GB would be "Jerusalem". Athletes could also sing along to the stirring strains of "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols. Another possibility was suggested by Read more ...
Carmel Doohan
The two parts of Henry IV parts 1 and 2 are very macho plays. Men drink, tell rude jokes, strut and lie their way into power and influence. In Globe to Globe's Latin American takes on the Bard, some hijo de puta and de puta madre seem fitting additions. In these two productions, machismo, in the style of the gangster or the swagger of the outlaw, was never in short supply. There were also many opportunities for cultural stereotypes to be referenced: the idea that gossips and chantas rule the country was played with in the Argentinian production of Part 2, the arrogant grandeur of the powerful Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
A couple of years ago a retrospective season for the BFI sought to reflect the filmmaking renaissance across South America that started at the end of the 1990s, and simply hasn’t stopped. Freed from the shackles of dictatorship and economic hardship, a young generation of directors were producing some of the best films in the world. It was never going to be easy to choose just 20 to reflect that, but our task as curators would have been a lot easier if one country, Argentina, wasn’t producing quite so many wonderful films.The Argentine Film Festival, at London’s Ritzy this weekend, is a first Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
In the UK we call them ambulance-chasers, those personal injury lawyers who prey on the victims of accidents, encouraging them to seek compensation, in return for a tidy fee. The Argentines, as the title of Pablo Trapero’s new film suggests, have their own word for this mucky breed – vultures.Deeply flawed Buenos Aires lawyer Héctor Sosa (Ricardo Darín, pictured below) even looks a little vulture-like, with his hooked nose and hungry, ravaged features. Darín, Argentina’s greatest actor, has the perfect face for seedy no-hoper:; when he played a grifter in the seminal Nine Queens, he resembled Read more ...
Ismene Brown
How far would you go, if you were utterly in love? Till death you do part? Kenneth MacMillan’s 1965 ballet Romeo and Juliet remains a magnet for audiences and for performers all playing that ritual game with their own feelings. Marianela Nuñez and Thiago Soares are a married couple, and brought to their single performance (unaccountably) in this new run of Covent Garden’s timeless attraction an infusion of pounding blood and sensual compatibility. Nothing was studied about the pleasure with which Nuñez nuzzled Soares’ neck briefly in their first snatched duet at the Capulet ball, nothing Read more ...
emma.simmonds
As gentle and emotionally affecting as they come, Argentinian director Pablo Giorgelli’s feature debut is the tenderly told story of the burgeoning bond between a migrant mother and a slightly grizzled, taciturn trucker, which gingerly moots the possibility of romance. It’s a wise and disarming tale of hope and unspoken sadness which, though you’ll barely notice it doing so, will work its way right under your skin.In Las Acacias Germán de Silva (main image and below right with Hebe Duarte) plays Rubén, a gruff and withdrawn long-distance lorry driver. As a favour to his employer he has agreed Read more ...
Nick Hasted
When The Secret in Their Eyes beat the more fancied A Prophet and The White Ribbon to last year's Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film, there was mild consternation. But Argentine Juan José Campanella’s film works both as a mystery with jigsaw pieces spread across a quarter-century, and an equally fragmented, frustrated romance.Retired legal investigator Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) visits his old boss Irene Hastings (Soledad Villamil) to discuss the novel he’s struggling to write based on their shared experiences around a savage murder case 25 years earlier, in 1974. Love and justice Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
We all make mistakes. I was absent for the start of Ingrid Fliter's Tempest sonata at her Queen Elizabeth Hall debut. Fliter was absent (mentally speaking) for much of the final movement of the Appassionata. The parts of Fliter's recital that we were both wholly present for, however, suggested she may well be as good a Beethovenian as she is a Chopinist.
Chopinists don't always make great Beethovenians (or vice versa). Fliter showed she had all the essential tools to be both: an engineer's feel of logistics, a circus entertainer's eye for variety, a bombardier's sense of timing. In the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
To anyone less than familiar with a transatlantic migration of 150 souls which took place in 1865, a bilingual film with dialogue in Spanish and Welsh may look like a subtitled bridge too far. Any such prejudgement would be a mistake. Patagonia is a film rich in cinematic textures which visits not one but two ravishing parts of the world rarely celebrated in widescreen. The fact that it has a lovely little cameo from Duffy, making her acting debut and contributing (in Welsh) to the soundtrack, is an extra recommendation.Patagonia opens, appropriately, in the week of St David’s Day. March 1 Read more ...
David Nice
This was a programme born for marketing cliché: banish the winter blues by bathing in Latin American/Iberian warmth. And it turned out to be true, by virtue of an unexpected watershed. How did the BBC Symphony strings manage to be first among the London orchestras to slip into something truly sensual, whether tangoing with an Argentinian bandoneónist - "A what?" you may ask, and I'll tell you shortly - or dancing malagueñas with a Spanish pianist? Was it the after-effect of the John Wilson Hollywood treatment last Sunday, or just sheer joy in welcoming back the high, bright style of conductor Read more ...