Hollywood is still in the grasp of the tango

Ever since Rudolph Valentino strutted onto the screen in 1921’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Hollywood has been entranced by the tango, with actors from Fred Astaire to Arnold Schwarzenegger having taken the tangled dance for a spin. In the last two years, the tango has figured prominently into “Frida,” “Chicago” and “Moulin Rouge,” as well as the upcoming “The Guys.” Some directors have become so transfixed by the dance that they have constructed entire movies around it, like Sally Potter’s “The Tango Lesson” (1997) and Carlos Saura’s Oscar-nominated “Tango” (1998).

The latest director to become as captivated is Robert Duvall, who wrote, directed, co-produced and stars -- as well as dances -- in “Assassination Tango,” opening Friday in Los Angeles and New York before expanding to other cities.

Though Hollywood is often attracted to the dance’s image of torrid sensuality, tango has a full range of emotions, attitudes and styles. “One of the best dancers I ever saw, his definition of tango was sweetness,” says Duvall, 67, a longtime devotee. “They never use words like ‘passion,’ or ‘sensual.’ It means different things to different people.”

In “Assassination Tango,” which co-stars Ruben Blades and Kathy Baker, Duvall wanted to depict the sweetness of the authentic Argentine tango which he has studied for years.

The film’s story line of an aging, methodical hit man who travels on assignment to Buenos Aires and begins drifting to the city’s dance clubs bears some parallels to Duvall’s own indoctrination in the dance.

His interest was sparked first in the mid-1980s when he attended a Broadway performance of “Tango Argentino,” a showcase for top-level veteran Argentine tango dancers that revived interest in the dance in the United States. Intrigued, Duvall began traveling to Argentina, a country he has visited more than 35 times now and where he met his girlfriend of seven years, Luciana Pedraza, in a Buenos Aires bakery.

Pedraza co-stars in “Assassination Tango” as Manuela, a dance hall local who guides Duvall’s character through both the city’s tango scene and a cautious flirtation.

As Duvall’s passion for the dance developed, his friend Francis Ford Coppola, who happened to be in the audience that first night for “Tango Argentino,” suggested Duval should play a character who tangos. Duvall wrote a script that fused the elegance of the Argentine tango with the violent fallout of the country’s turbulent political situations. Coppola, who has directed Duvall in five films, agreed to finance the film, shot on location in Argentina on a budget of several million dollars, through his American Zoetrope.

Until she met Duvall, Pedraza -- like most Argentines -- didn’t dance the tango. Duvall introduced Pedraza, 31, to top-level instructors, including his friend Pablo Veron, who starred in “The Tango Lesson” and can be seen in “Assassination Tango,” and she has been dancing for six years.

Pedraza, who also never had acted before, wasn’t automatically Duvall’s choice to play Manuela. Duvall, who has trained nonprofessional actors in other films he’s directed, needed someone who could act, dance and speak English. He considered Pedraza and two other women for the part, including her younger sister, but Pedraza impressed him with her improvisational acting skills and natural grace.

“Her dancing is extremely elegant, as much as anybody anywhere I know in Argentina,” he says. “She’s gotten so good it’s unbelievable.” In fact, Duvall and Pedraza performed the tango at a White House state dinner in 1999 for Argentina’s then-President Carlos Menem. For “Assassination Tango,” Duvall took a more impressionistic approach rather than staging big production numbers, with most of the self-choreographed dancers seen only fleetingly. “I didn’t want to lean too heavily on the tango,” he says. “I just wanted it to be a passing thing ... like somebody observing if they went to those clubs, what they would take away from that.”

The tango can be danced fast or slow, closely interlocked or extended apart -- between lifetime lovers, father and daughter, or strangers who speak through the twist of an ankle. “Sometimes it’s exciting and has the sense of Latin, and it also can be romantic and classy,” says Paul Pellicoro. The well known Argentine born-, now New York- based, tango instructor coached Al Pacino for “Scent of a Woman” and Robert De Niro for “Flawless.”

Julie Taymor is another in a long line of directors who have used the tango to great cinematic effect. With “Frida,” she found the playful, tequila-drenched pas de deux that Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd share in the film was a fun way to portray painter Frida Kahlo’s “interest in women and her bisexuality and her boldness to shock.”

“It’s a dance of seduction and repulsion. It’s really got a strong masculine-feminine dialogue going,” says Taymor.

Taymor also didn’t want a tango that looked slickly choreographed, but one that two women who were familiar with the dance might perform casually. The director and her actors worked out the steps the day before they shot it with the help of Mia Maestro, who plays Frida’s sister and played the lead in “Tango.”

“Ashley Judd and Salma Hayek are very close friends, so there’s a true attraction to each other as friends, and I think that they enjoyed that,” Taymor says.

In test screenings, audience members often singled out the scene as their favorite.

“A lot of people talk about how erotic it is, which is kind of nice to have something that’s erotic without it being an actual sex scene or nudity,” Taymor says, though she notes that Judd’s character, photographer Tina Modotti, was not lesbian and did not have an affair with Frida.

Director Rob Marshall says that for the film version of the stage musical “Chicago,” which was originally directed on Broadway by Bob Fosse, he didn’t want to be disrespectful by doing subpar Fosse-style choreography. So Marshall re-conceptualized the musical numbers, including the rousing “Cell Block Tango,” during which Catherine Zeta-Jones and the “merry murderesses of the Cook County Jail” justify offing their lovers.

“I found myself creating this idea of tangoing with their victims, these women,” Marshall says. “I got to follow in his footsteps, but I had to create my own.”

In “The Guys,” adapted from Anne Nelson’s autobiographical play about a New York City journalist [Sigourney Weaver] helping a fire captain [Antony LaPaglia] write eulogies for his co-workers killed on Sept. 11, the tango stands as a symbol of life.

Weaver recounts witnessing in the days after the attacks a tango-themed wedding party for a Japanese man and a blond California woman who met at a tango club in Central Park.

Pellicoro, who taught LaPaglia the steps for a tango in the film with Weaver, says it’s a true story and that his students organized the club years ago. (“The Guys” opens here on April 25.)

Pellicoro says that attendance at his New York tango classes often spikes after a film showcasing the dance is released, but tango wannabes are often surprised that the Argentine tango he teaches, which is different from the rigid competitive ballroom-style tango, is less showy and more fluid and creative -- and there’s less dipping.

When he gave a lesson to Katie Couric for a “Today Show” segment, Pellicoro says, “the first thing she did was dipped on me. “This thing with the rose and the teeth and people dragging each other around ... that was Valentino tango,” he says. “And that’s what everyone thinks, that Valentino is tango.”

Duvall was told by one the great dancers that the beginning and end of the tango is the walk, rather than any complicated step pattern.

“You can learn a figure in 10 minutes, but it takes you 10 years to learn how to walk,” says Duvall, who lives with Pedraza on a Virginia farm, where the couple often practice in a barn they have converted into a dance hall.

“The people that are smartest realize they have to ... make it individual to them. It has to become part of what you are.”

*

‘Assassination Tango’

Where: Laemmle Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-3500; Laemmle Monica, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, (310) 394-9741

When: Opens Friday

MPAA rating: R, for strong language and some violence

Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes