MOVIE REVIEW : Exhilaration, Charm and Grace in Musical-Romance ‘Danzon’

Great movie musicals and romances exhilarate the audience. Or, at least, they’re intended to. And part of the immense charm of Maria Novaro’s “Danzon” (Laemmle’s Sunset 5), which is almost a musical/ romance, almost a comedy/drama, is that it aims for that pure exhilaration, in a much more complicated context.

It’s designed to seduce, just as the danzon itself--a Caribbean/Mexican ballroom step that mixes elegance, tradition and earthy spontaneity--is a mock-seduction, a pantomime of male lust and female coquetry.

Novaro wants to leave her audience in a beatific mood, ravish us with wit and beauty. And she does. Her subject is a woman trying to find herself--or, more specifically, a woman trying to find her dance partner, and discovering herself instead. But though you can watch “Danzon” simply for its story and characters, the style works in a larger way. It is a dance. And “Danzon” suggests that life is a dance too, one whose most intricate steps can be appreciated best only after you’re able, temporarily, to escape from them.

“Danzon’s” lead character is Julia Solorzano, a 40ish telephone operator whose routine has its only bright interludes at a Mexico City dance hall. There, she performs with a courtly, white-hatted, mustachioed man named Carmelo (Daniel Rergis), her constant partner for six years and numerous nights.

Though they embrace with practiced sensuality on the ballroom floor, Julia--played with subtlety and warmth by the excellent actress Maria Rojo--knows little about Carmelo, beyond the fact that he’s a bachelor cook from Veracruz. They prefer it that way. Their romance on the floor is perfect, predictably sensuous, comfortably circumscribed. Outside, things might get too messy and real.

All this is shattered when Carmelo, in trouble with the law, disappears, and Julia discovers how crucial her diversion is. The danzon is not a pleasant interlude in life. It is her life, sole visible fruit of all her abandoned dreams. Disconsolate, she leaves her job, friends and daughter and heads for Veracruz to find Carmelo, her first long trip alone anywhere.

What she finds in that attractive seaport town--the bewitchingly clear ocean views, picturesque strolls where all heads turn admiringly as she walks, a singing landlady, a salty hooker, a warmly generous transvestite performer and, finally, a young lover at the harbor--is obviously the stuff of pure wish-fulfillment. Finally, she has what the danzon always merely symbolized. But only briefly, only until the next dance begins.

Is it an illusion? Perhaps. But, is she free? Definitely. If the incidents are fantastic, Julia’s reactions are disarmingly real.

Novaro’s movie is one of the best “women’s pictures” of the year. It has a delicate, playful intelligence; it’s done with brilliant lyricism and rich dollops of character and humor. Its models, the Mexican musicals and romances of the ‘40s and ‘50s, are movies that, in turn, often copied Hollywood. And, like the best genre directors, Novaro collides their “cliches” with reality.

Even so, Novaro probably hasn’t forgotten the greatest “Mexican” cineaste of all: sardonic social satirist Luis Bunuel. The characters of “Danzon” are “types,” but icon-breaking types. Transvestite Susy (Tito Vasconcelos), who wants Julia to lead when they dance, comments on Mexican machismo. The cynical landlady (Dona Tu), with six children who never see her, is the flip-side of Latin mother worship. And the attentive young lover may be too perfect to be true, or too young to last.

“Danzon” (MPAA rated PG-13) doesn’t necessarily make you laugh a lot. But it makes you smile almost continuously, which is often more difficult. Except for Bunuel’s films, Mexican movies in urban settings tend to look rough. But this one is all urbane elegance, grace. The colors shimmer, the actors play with warmth and sophistication, the entire movie seems to glide by. When the camera moves, which is in nearly every shot, it moves with an effortless grace and bewitching airiness that recalls a master musical-maker like Vincente Minnelli. It drifts around the sets and landscapes, quietly and rhapsodically, like a dancer or lover circling the floor. In this seemingly careless rapture, life becomes a dream; the world becomes music; romance, briefly, becomes possible.

‘Danzon’

Maria Rojo: Julia

Carmen Salinas: Dona Ti

Blanca Guerra: La Colorada

Tito Vasconcelos: Susy

A Macono Cine Video, S. A. de C.V./Instituto Mexicano de Cine/Television Expanola/Tabasco Films/Gobierno Del Estado de Veracruz presentation, released by Sony Pictures Classics. Director Maria Novaro. Producer Jorge Sanchez. Executive producer Dulce Kuri. Screenplay by Beatriz and Maria Novaro. Cinematographer Rodrigo Garcia. Editor Nelson Rodriguez, Novaro. Sound Nerio Barberis. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13.