OUR LAST TANGO (German Kral). Subtitled. 85 minutes. Opens December 25. For venues and times, see movies.nowtoronto.com. Rating: NNN
In their heyday, octogenarians María Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes were the Fred and Ginger of tango, and this imaginative doc takes a look at their 50-year career and their often stormy personal life.
The two met as teenagers in a Buenos Aires milonga, fell in and out of love, got married in Vegas and split up. But they more or less maintained their onstage partnership until 1997, when Copes mysteriously told Nieves that a performance in Japan would be their last.
Director German Kral interviews the two separately, and the big question is whether they’ll reunite onstage or not for this film. Kral has also hired some talented dancer/actors to play the couple in their 20s and 30s, and these sequences pay off when the actors interact with the people they’re playing.
Nieves is the more open subject: proud, passionate and still charismatic as hell. There’s great archival footage of the two burning up the stage.
This is an entertaining, hot-blooded look at personal and artistic independence.
