Thursday, May 22, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: Love and revolution

John Malkovich makes a dazzling directing debut with The Dancer Upstairs

By Jeannette Catsoulis

The Dancer Upstairs, adapted by British writer Nicholas Shakespeare from his own novel and directed by actor John Malkovich, is a stunningly stylish and sensual film about love, loyalty and the difficulty of remaining honest in dishonest times.

Set in an unnamed Latin American country, the movie follows police lieutenant Augustin Rejas (Before Night Falls' Javier Bardem) as he tracks an elusive revolutionary leader named Ezequiel--a character loosely based on the Peruvian guerilla Abimael Guzman of The Shining Path. No one has seen Ezequiel, but the terrifyingly bizarre acts of violence perpetrated in his name are everywhere: chickens with explosives strapped to their claws, children with bombs hidden in school satchels. The revolutionaries are particularly fond of stringing dead dogs from lampposts, blood-inscribed slogans hanging from their necks. "I wouldn't rule out a cat lover," comments Rejas wryly, eyeing one such dripping carcass.

Part political thriller, part character study, The Dancer Upstairs is a supremely confident directorial debut from Malkovich, who describes it as "a disturbing picture." He's right; but it is also fresh, vibrant, and completely absorbing. Skillfully merging the political and the personal, Malkovich handles both with scenes of staggering originality--as in the film's most shocking sequence, which features a cruising limo, a lecherous government official, and a playful group of innocuous-looking schoolgirls. In the hands of Ezequiel, innocence itself is a lethal weapon.

But it's Rejas who piques our interest, the troubled cop who would rather be working on his father's coffee farm, now seized by the military. A one-time lawyer, he became a policeman, he says, "to find a more honest way of practicing the law," and now finds himself again surrounded by corruption. He also finds himself married to a woman (Elvira Mínguez) whose shallowness and lack of intellect seem to have crept up on him. Listening indulgently while she prattles about getting a nose job and giving a speech to her book club (with a nice touch of literary snobbishness, the script has them reading The Bridges of Madison County), Rejas has the look of a man stunned to discover himself at an emotional crossroads.

Huge and solid, his mournful face bisected by acres of nose and eyes like oil wells, Bardem plays Rejas with modest, slow-moving intensity. It's a magnificent performance, complicated and not a little heartbreaking. Increasingly attracted to his daughter's enigmatic ballet teacher, Yolanda (the lovely Laura Morante, of The Son's Room), Rejas spies on her in a torment of adoration. Rashness is not in his nature, but before the end of the movie Rejas will have sacrificed all he has for this woman whose secrets he cannot begin to imagine.

Dancer Upstairs has something to say about the relationship between art and politics, but Malkovich is smart enough to refrain from browbeating his audience into ideological corners. Instead, his references are light and unconventional--for example, a crucial clue as to Ezequiel's whereabouts is located in a video of Costa-Gavras's 1973 classic, State of Siege. In a sense the film, like its protagonist, is aware of the politics yet somehow disconnected from them. "I'm not really interested in Shining Path's ideology," explains Malkovich. "The personal histories of the characters are more important than the historical details."

Alternately elegant and electrifying, the film unfolds with the taut, restrained sexiness of Graham Greene (but without the guilt). Shooting in Spain, Ecuador and Portugal, cinematographer José Luis Alcaine coaxes equal beauty from dusty streets and golden skin, sweeping his camera in wide arcs that give the actors room to move. Three years ago, in Shadow of the Vampire, Malkovich played a legendary director. On the evidence of this film, he could be on the way to becoming one himself.