Salome
A world premiere in the official competition, Carlos Saura's "Salome" is a dance film that may lack the broad appeal (or overall visual razzle-dazzle) of his Oscar nominee "Tango", but it's another exhilarating exercise in cinema that stands out in a crowd. Fans of the director's oeuvre and ballet aficionados should dance their way to art houses as it makes its way around the world.
Initially conceived as a stage-only work about the biblical story of Salome, King Herod and John the Baptist, Saura's film grew out of his collaboration with Spanish dancer and choreographer Aida Gomez, who plays the title role. With a little fictionalizing in the documentarylike first half-hour -- Pere Arquillue plays the director of a new flamenco version of the Salome story that is gearing up for its first performance -- the movie is climaxed by the dialogue-free, approximately 50-minute ballet.
In the setup, we're made privy through interviews and voice-overs to the creative process and choices that go into staging "Salome". The simple set with three background panels, the lighting, the costumes, the choreography, a little background on Gomez and Javier Toca, who dances John the Baptist, all add up to a smooth intro to the main event.
With music by Roque Banos that incorporates flamenco rhythms and other influences -- with the beautiful guitar playing of Tomatito -- the ballet's story line is simple and evocative of its timeless themes of jealousy, sex and death. When Salome, in a sizzling red dress, seems to succeed at seducing John the Baptist but is then rejected, the bodies and facial expressions say much more than words. When she next performs for stepfather King Herod (Paco Mora) in the dance of veils, with her mother Herodias (Carmen Villena) encouraging her, there's a sensual energy that sweeps one toward the shocking request she makes when it is over.
Likewise, Salome's dance around the severed head of the Baptist is done with such artful artifice one feels the waves of longing and regret that her anger has caused such a fateful crime. Frequently contrasting the dancers with "a real time retro-projection" of the dance in progress, Saura and cinematographers Jose Luis Lopez-Linares and Teo Delgado have fashioned a consistently eye-catching project that triumphs from having such a luminous talent as Gomez in nearly every sequence.
SALOME
Zebra Producciones
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Carlos Saura
Producer: Antonio Saura
Executive producer: Saura Medrano
Choreographers: Jose Antonio, Aida Gomez
Directors of photography: Jose Luis Lopez-Linares, Teo Delgado
Editor: Julia Juaniz
Music: Roque Banos
Costume designer: Pedro Moreno
Cast:
Salome: Aida Gomez
The Director: Pere Arquillue
Herod: Paco Mora
Herodias: Carmen Villena
John the Baptist: Javier Toca
Running time -- 86 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Initially conceived as a stage-only work about the biblical story of Salome, King Herod and John the Baptist, Saura's film grew out of his collaboration with Spanish dancer and choreographer Aida Gomez, who plays the title role. With a little fictionalizing in the documentarylike first half-hour -- Pere Arquillue plays the director of a new flamenco version of the Salome story that is gearing up for its first performance -- the movie is climaxed by the dialogue-free, approximately 50-minute ballet.
In the setup, we're made privy through interviews and voice-overs to the creative process and choices that go into staging "Salome". The simple set with three background panels, the lighting, the costumes, the choreography, a little background on Gomez and Javier Toca, who dances John the Baptist, all add up to a smooth intro to the main event.
With music by Roque Banos that incorporates flamenco rhythms and other influences -- with the beautiful guitar playing of Tomatito -- the ballet's story line is simple and evocative of its timeless themes of jealousy, sex and death. When Salome, in a sizzling red dress, seems to succeed at seducing John the Baptist but is then rejected, the bodies and facial expressions say much more than words. When she next performs for stepfather King Herod (Paco Mora) in the dance of veils, with her mother Herodias (Carmen Villena) encouraging her, there's a sensual energy that sweeps one toward the shocking request she makes when it is over.
Likewise, Salome's dance around the severed head of the Baptist is done with such artful artifice one feels the waves of longing and regret that her anger has caused such a fateful crime. Frequently contrasting the dancers with "a real time retro-projection" of the dance in progress, Saura and cinematographers Jose Luis Lopez-Linares and Teo Delgado have fashioned a consistently eye-catching project that triumphs from having such a luminous talent as Gomez in nearly every sequence.
SALOME
Zebra Producciones
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Carlos Saura
Producer: Antonio Saura
Executive producer: Saura Medrano
Choreographers: Jose Antonio, Aida Gomez
Directors of photography: Jose Luis Lopez-Linares, Teo Delgado
Editor: Julia Juaniz
Music: Roque Banos
Costume designer: Pedro Moreno
Cast:
Salome: Aida Gomez
The Director: Pere Arquillue
Herod: Paco Mora
Herodias: Carmen Villena
John the Baptist: Javier Toca
Running time -- 86 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/4/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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