The Tango Lesson

A director named Sally, at work on a screenplay in Paris, gets caught by tango and starts taking lessons from Pablo, an Argentine dancer. A bargain is struck between them: Pablo will make her a tango dancer and Sally will put him in her film. As the lessons go on the two grow closer. Then they go to Buenos Aires, and what each of them wants from the other starts to come apart. Sally Potter wrote and directed the film and played herself; Pablo Verón, opposite her, also plays himself. It is semi-autobiographical. The dance scenes are shot in long takes; the camera does not count steps, it stands inside the dance. The film is also about what it means to learn something: clumsiness, embarrassment, repetition, and at last the body understanding. It moves back and forth between black and white and colour.