Wild Tango

Buenos Aires at the end of the sixties. A young musician called Tanguito writes songs in a café and tries, with his friends, to make rock in Spanish. The country is under military rule; long hair, being out at night, and standing around in a group are all matters for the police. Tanguito goes to prison, is confined in a psychiatric hospital, and dies at twenty six. Marcelo Piñeyro directs. Fernán Mirás plays Tanguito and Cecilia Dopazo plays his girlfriend Mariana, with Ulises Butrón providing the singing voice. Héctor Alterio and Imanol Arias are also in the cast. It runs 130 minutes and opened in Buenos Aires on 3 June 1993. Tanguito was real: José Alberto Iglesias Correa, one of the founders of Argentine rock. The film mixes fact and invention freely in telling his life, which caused an argument among musicians on release. It became the most successful Argentine film made to that point. Neither Fernán Mirás nor Cecilia Dopazo was known beforehand, and both became famous overnight. The question behind it is making music under repression. Rock in Spanish was not only a genre in Argentina at the time but a form of opposition, and the film says so directly. Who it is for: viewers curious about the history of Latin American rock and about Argentina under the military. Who it is not for: anyone wanting reliable information. The film romanticises Tanguito and alters the historical detail freely.