Bodas de sangre

I am drawn to dance films, first for the dance itself, I marvel at how the human body can turn itself into visual music. But also for what dance can signify in a cinematic sense: the embodying of sense in form, the visual flow of consciousness, but where the camera is one of the dancers and wordlessly conveys whole essences in the space of what we see.

Here, I like the idea of centering the dance in the ordinary life that gives rise to it, so in the same flow we can pick up both improvised life and meticulous abstraction. We get the gathering of the troupe and preparations, the putting on of make-up and dressing-room small talk, the practice and rehearsal with its mistakes, and then a full dress rehearsal of the play instead of a big show.

My gripe is that so much more could've been made on the weaving of realities. We have a 'real' first half, but we're not immersed long enough to form connections. The feel like we are eavesdropping could be carried in the actual danced narrative, which is about secrets and watching. The energy and choreographed spillovers in the camera could be more rigorous, the flamenco more passionate. Imagine a mistake in the flow like in the first rehearsal, but they dance through it: how do we accommodate damage, chance, spontaneity?

As it is, there's too much theatric symmetry for me to like—not enough that is broken or alive. But at least the last scene is pretty amazing.

It's a knife fight between men for the eyes of the woman danced in slow-motion—the mirrored poise and grappling of pride mistaken as love, the arrested flow playing to the desired spectacle of manhood both by us and in the play, the ballet of camera singling again and again the knife, the woman's muted mimicked and impotent horror of watching. It's a lovely scene that I'll keep with me, a sort of visual carving in emotional time.

In an attempt to transform Lorca's play into film, Saura has used the art of the popular Spanish tradition, Flamenco. Without ever uttering a word of dialogue, the performers of the Flamenco dance are able to portray the basic plot and themes of the original script, based on a true story. The basic plot, two lovers unable to be together, is generally easy to follow through the entirety of the dance. However, if ballet is not of personal interest, even the brief 70 minutes of this movie will seem an eternity. The entire second half of the film is Lorca's play in the form of dance. To add to the film's focus on dance, the first half shows the dancers warming up and preparing for their performance. This type of movie will appeal to those who can appreciate the art of dance and to those whose patience won't wear thin. For the full effect of Bodas de sangre, I would highly recommend Lorca's original version over the film.

¨Bodas de sangre¨ or ¨Blood Wedding¨ is one of the greatest and most beautiful Lorca dramas about life, love, passion, customs and gypsies. A team of dancers puts Lorca's 'Blood Wedding' on stage, the tragic play about a man (Antonio Gades) who is still in love with his ex-girlfriend (Cristina Hoyos), and tries to reunite with her, despite the planned wedding to her groom (Juan Antonio Jiménez), about to get married.

Lorca's drama is transformed into flamenco dance, a film with almost no dialogues where the entire plot is carried out through dance, choreography and staging. At the end of his long collaboration with the producer Elias Querejeta, which extends over 15 years and 13 films, director Saura shoots a ballet with choreography by Antonio Gades, based on the work of the same name by Garcia Lorca and music by Emilio de Diego for the producer Emilio Piedra. Its not excessive length makes Saura include quasi-documentary footage about the preparation of the dancers in order to achieve a minimum running time that allows its commercial exploitation. In the end, the film is 72 minutes long.

Although ¨Bodas de sangre¨ is shot in a poor and unique set, the film is still interesting due to the magic that the dancers give off while they are dancing the wonderful flamenco pieces, along with the exciting background music. Furthermore , including some songs: ¨La nana¨ performed by Marisol (at the time Gades's wife with whom she played various movies) and ¨Ay, mi sombrero¨ performed by Pepe Blanco .The main interest is that 'Blood Wedding' (1981) based on the homonymous work by Federico Garcia Lorca was the first film in the trilogy that has brought so much success to its director and which is completed by 'Carmen' (1983) and 'El amor Brujo' (1986). The result had a great resonance, even more internationally than nationally; it represents the launch of a first-class dancer, Cristina Hoyos, and confirms that Gades is as good a dancer and choreographer as he is a bad actor.

That's why after the success of the musical rehearsal ¨Bodas de Sangre¨ (Blood Wedding) (1981) and before filming ¨El Amor Brujo¨ (1986) with music by Manuel de Falla, the producer Emiliano Piedra, who accepted the rights to George Bizet's opera were the public domain, convinced director Carlos Saura and the dancers Antonio Gades and Cristina Hoyos to do the best of his three musicals: ¨Carmen¨. Due to the hit of the film, they continued with a successful theatrical version, directed jointly by Gades and Saura, which the dancer's company performed throughout the world with a large and fervent audience that followed the performances.

¨Bodas de sangre¨ was directed with a striking visual sense and very well performed with the wonderful dances. So it's definitely a more cultured affair than most of the Spanish movies. It is fundamentally a tragic melodrama with ballet scenes, that's why it is musically riveting , it is almost, also , perfect and laced with adequate photography by Teo Escamilla , particularly shown on the spectacular and sensitive dancing set pieces. I was able to enjoy many of the visual elements, in fact this one results to be the quintaessential Dance film , featuring brilliant and frenetic choreography and embellished thanks to its chromatic aesthetic and a high-caliber Flamenco dance. Adding sensual re-creations of love , passion , betrayal and jealousy .

The work is distinctively Andalusian in character as well dances and songs. The music contains moments of remarkable beauty and originality ; adding the guitar tones of notorious andalusian artists. The great trio starring is formed by splendid dancers : Antonio Gades , Cristina Hoyos and Juan Antonio Jiménez, they are really fabulous . This splendid motion picture was compellingly directed by Carlos Saura.

I had found Saura's last film, TANGO, trite and insulting, but I decided to give him another chance, in deference to his reputation. I needn't have bothered. Whatever his talent as a chronicler of character under oppression, he has no ability to film dance. He has no faith in dance's own expressive tropes, so he must impose meaning on them. He films in a flat, leaden style, which never allows the dance to come to life.

Like TANGO, Saura foregrounds a self-reflexivity on the film. This time, however, it is used relatively intelligently. There is a pretence of documentary as we watch 'famed' choreographer Antonio Gades prepare for his flamenco adaptation of Lorca's Blood Wedding. We see the preparations of the dancers, the (tedious) warm ups, the donning of costumes.

None of this is gratuitous (although the lingering on the undressing female dancers might be), and is infinitely preferable to the fictional ponderings of TANGO. The opening credits roll over a sepia photograph of the cast, mimicking the period in which the play was set. Lorca was, of course, a famous leftist, murdered by Fascists in the Civil War, and this is a film, made only a few years after Franco's death, that attempts to come to terms with Spanish history. The lengthy process of rehearsal emphasises the process of becoming, suggesting that history is not the monolithic entity the Right would like it to be, but a fluid interpretive searching, grasping, for the truth. The repeated gazing into mirrors links this national quest with an examination of the self. And yet Old Spain is not so quickly vanquished - one dancer hangs religious pictures on her mirror.

So, the dance is made to carry a lot of baggage. We are not given the actual performance, but a dress rehearsal, continuing the idea of becoming, as if to offer a fixed definitive version would be to concede to the enemy. This austere restriction to one bare space, without sets, without any help from Saura, means that the dancing has to be spectacular for the film to succeed. It is not, being rather conservative, and blindingly obvious and literal, the dance equivalent of dialogue sung in a Lloyd-Webber musical. Every gesture is laboriously spelt out; the viewer is credited with no intelligence.

It is totally inadequate to the play's politics, and the pared down approach means we lose its febrile, exhilirating excess. The critique of machismo and the death wish, applied to Spanish culture as a whole, is still there, but the climactic stand-off, while comparitively inventive, is more silly than cathartic, like Cavalliera Rusticana with the sound down. It is odd that a film so critical of the macho ethic should be so...macho.

As with TANGO, any effect the film has lies in the music, which, especially in the mariachi wedding sequence, provides the drama and beauty absent from the filming itself.

How can a film be so simple, and yet so beaultiful? It's easy to see that the film must has costed almost nothing, and it's very very simple: just shows a dance group showing it's art. But the impressive corporal and facial expressions, the intense dance and all emotions envolved, the ones in the tragic story and the ones in the real story of the dancers, makes this film a simple work of art. Simple as a movie, but art as it is.