Danzon

A light-hearted romantic tale about thirty-something Julia (Maria Rojo), a telephone operator and single mother of a 15-year-old daughter living in Mexico City whose passion is dancing the “danzon”, a ballroom dance with its origins in Haiti and which spread across to Cuba during the mid-1800s, finally finding its way to Mexico several years later. Mexico in fact celebrated the 100th anniversary of the danzon in the 1990s. Sensual and seductive, danzon expresses the unspoken relationship which exists between the dancing partners, where “the man commands and the woman obeys; the man seduces and the woman shines” and for Julia, when Carmelo (Daniel Rergis), her suave and elegant dancing partner of ten years, mysteriously disappears one night, life suddenly becomes meaningless. Julia sets out determinedly to find Carmelo, following a trail of clues to Vera Cruz where she encounters an eclectic mix of new friends including a motherly hotel manager with an acerbic tongue, a prostitute with a young baby, and a transvestite named Susy (Tito Vasconcelos). This journey of self-discovery, of old loves and new loves, twists and turns gently to the tune of the rhythmic Mexican music and the sensually tantalising dancing of the danzon. Maria Novaro (Lola, 1989) is one of Mexico’s most successful women film directors and is not only renowned for her feminist approach but is also considered an “expressionist” director for the use of colors as an important feature in her filmmaking. “Danzon” appeared in the Cannes Film Festival Official Selection for 1991. Cast also includes Carmen Salinas, Margarita Isabel, Victor Carpinteiro, Cheli Godinez. Original music by Agustin Lara, Pepe Luis, Felipe Perez, Consuelo Velazquez.