Flamenco, Flamenco (Carlos Suara, 2010)

As someone who has a love of dance movies and a general dislike for the plot elements of most dance movies, I am not ashamed to admit I was more excited for Flamenco, Flamenco than possibly any other film at the festival. It was, as these things tend to happen sometimes, by far the biggest disappointment. The concept is a series of flamenco performances introduced without narrative pretense or introduction, strung together into 90 minutes of performance bliss. As concepts go, it's pretty fantastic. I have long been a proponent of the idea of kinetic cinematic pleasure for its own sake, stripped of ideologies so that it may revel in beautiful motion. Unfortunately, in the process of stripping down the narrative into almost nothing, the director has also stripped away the cinema. Each performance looks as though it was shot in one take, which would be fine if they did so with an elaborately conceived filmic way to present it in mind. They did not. The camera is reduced to a useless proxy of a theatre audience member, trapped in a stilted, lethargic medium shot with occasional cuts from dancers to the musical performers often seated around them. And, while I would never call myself a musical expert, these cuts seem to belong to a rhythm I cannot in any way comprehend. Many of the best dances are undone by the lack of build-up in their execution -- it seems that just as the energy is beginning to flow and we're about to be taken somewhere awesome and inspiring the movie cuts to a singer or band player, destroying whatever momentum was being developed.

I gather that most of these performers are famous in their native Spain, so the director was attempting to pay them proper tribute and not focus solely on the dancers. But compelling cinema is not about making sure everyone feels like they got enough camera time. An easy way to fix this problem would've been to introduce the band at the beginning of the sequence, with whatever kind of introductory editing and camera movement the director felt worked best, then progress from there into the dancing. This could've been a great way to showcase the fact of dance as a natural, visual expression of music. I mean, after all, we still get to hear the songs the entire dance number. Is listening to music not the best way to appreciate it? At any rate, the dullness of the movement and editing lulled me almost to sleep periodically throughout this, and I exited as quickly as possible when it was finally over.

There were a few highlights, though, including one dance number with a group of women shrouded in sheer black veils that stretched to the floor. It had a beautiful, funereal element that mingled with the ecstatic dancing to create something that was both harrowing and joyous at the same time. Too bad that even this scene the director tries to ruin with static camerawork and baffling editing choices.