SnoopyStyle It's Latin America in the Recent Past. Agustín Rejas (Javier Bardem) is a Sergeant manning a road check. The country is corrupt with a militaristic Presidency. Rejas is a former lawyer ready for a promotion in the capital. A mysterious man with others and a dead dog in a truck escape the checkpoint. Then it's five years later. He's a police Lieutenant. With his young partner Sucre (Juan Diego Botto), he's investigating a mysterious revolutionary group led by Ezequiel. They hang dogs from the lamp posts. The violence escalates as leaders get assassinated. Yolanda (Laura Morante) is Rejas' daughter Laura's dance teacher. He begins an affair with her as he suspects her connection to Ezequiel.The non-specificity of the time and place could have been improved by weaving the real story into this movie. It doesn't have to be perfect and most movies aren't real biographies anyways. The great aspect of this is Bardem and the sense of Latin America that this projects. John Malkovich is directing for the first time and he shows some competency. It is well-made and most importantly, he focuses on Bardem. The story does leave some questions. The ballet teacher's connections to everyone is very convenient. The investigation is not that clear. I don't know how nebulous the book is but adapting may have left something out of the movie. It would help to have great clarity, and better intensity.

johnnyboyz Crime thrillers set amidst repression and political turmoil with the potential to be in the Spanish language are not the first things that come to mind when we think of the contributions to cinema by that of a certain John Malkovich. It is a credit, then, that he has created something in The Dancer Upstairs that feels like it might have come from Latin America; that feels like it may have been made by someone with an adept knowledge of things such as oppression in these places, even as a film made by someone who may indeed have lived through such periods. Malkovich is, of course, first and foremost an American actor, but he demonstrates he's more than capable of capturing on screen what oppression and anxiety bathed in a colonial Spanish nation might look and feel like in this 2003 film.The film isn't necessarily set anywhere in particular: this is a "capital city" in an unspecified Latin American country whose flag bears both the colour scheme and the potential for insignia akin to Guatemala's, although further reading reveals it's based on a chain of events that happened in Peru in the 1990's and the film itself was shot in Portugal. We kick off in the desert, several years before the main body of the film takes place: a jeep full of young political renegades crash through a small checkpoint, getting away with ruthlessly running over the lone guard. Then they reach the checkpoint run by Javier Bardem's character, a middle aged man who gave up a career in law to join these services. He is Agustin Rejas, and he is kind; talkative and understanding where those wanting to pass through are sinister and without emotion. One of those in the car needs their photo taken to advance, something they are reluctant to do but Rejas talks them through it with the minimum of fuss as if it were a child about to sit in the dentist's chair. One reviewer already pointed out how fresh this scene feels, if purely from a standpoint that generic roles have been subverted: the suited guards at the checkpoint are calm and understanding, whereas those wanting to pass through look like they just want to see your blood on the wall.Years later, Rejas is a police detective with a young assistant in this same, anonymous Latin American country. The problems in life have escalated from correcting passports to finding those whom to some are freedom fighters, but to others (including Rejas' superiors) are dangerous terrorists: a man calling himself "Ezequiel", whose forte against the state is to apply the usual threat of explosives on top of hanging the carcasses of dead animals from street lamps for the grim spectacle of it all. No one knows who he is, and the police are wide eyed and dumbfounded in attaining any sort of lead. It is Rejas' job to take him down, the safety of his young daughter and wife Sylvina (Lencastre) essentially at stake in that if this ghost-like individual sees all and knows all, then how long will it be until what matters most to our Rejas is threatened?The film is a binary depiction of this man's world in both a personal and professional sense, the sort of well-made drama you wish more people had heard of and consequently seen; the covering of someone going to great lengths to uncover the identity of this terrorist as well as deal with the ever growing feeling he has for a certain Yolanda (Morante), a ballet teacher who is educating his daughter in the art of such a thing. The strand revolving around these two is neatly attributed its own weight away from the central tract, moreover we observe Bardem's existing wife come off as a bit shallow; an image obsessed individual whom we don't especially like all that much. Where Yolanda's profession is performance, Rejas' is investigation and the dance studio acts as a fitting locale wherein the ballet apparel accentuating her figure and a bombardment of mirrors dotted around do well to hook Rejas in as much as they do allude to a man reflecting on his own marital status during which he ponders his love for this woman.The film plays like an old private eye movie, wherein the lead is looking for someone dangerous or wholly specific; has to deal with a love interest and is forced, on occasion, into cooperating with those on his own side that are not entirely helpful. Recall the opening act of Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the second sequel to McTiernan's own 1988 original, and try to re-imagine all that scooting around and puzzle solving under a cloud of potentially lethal terrorist activity without the slam-bang approach; replaced instead with something more methodical and more burning. Try re-imaging it with its lead spending the next few scenes after having had to fire a gun still shaken from the experience; picture the film stretched out to a longer running time and you have something that resembles The Dancer Upstairs, a really engaging and well made drama.

RResende For the way they move my soul, i think films fall into 3 categories: -those that make me indifferent, unable to push any of the buttons that stimulate my mind and emotions, the worst kind; -others just punch you in the stomach, they just shock you, force you to face situations without making you really dig into its core; -the best kind of film move everything inside you, make you discover parts of your soul you didn't know to be there. They grab you where it matters, and lead you to uncharted territories;I would never guess that this film would fall into the third category. But it does, despite its flaws, which are not few. For his work as an actor i always thought Malkovich was an interesting person. There is a kind of disturbed lucidity that overshadows even his loudest commercially oriented interpretations. Also, if you check is role choices, he is one of those guys who gets into crap projects to make a living, and than finds time to work in things that motivate him. That's why we have 3 participations in Oliveira's films. Here he tried directing.On the surface, the story is a bad choice. How and what happens is uninteresting, predictable and even incoherent. But there is something great: we are led into thinking we will watch a political thriller, high conspiracies that affect the lives of small people. The lonely hero who will do the right thing. Having not read the book, i'm guessing it points that way. The beginning of the film gives that impression as well. But than Malkovich deceives us, and smoothly pushes us into a deeper layer of personal emotions, of character development through people's relations. In the end, this is a story about an interesting character caught up in a corrupt shallow world, who makes his way into trying to live an honest life, "looking for a more honest way to practice the law". A little bit like Malkovich's career. We have that character beautifully played by a highly focused Bardem, a very interesting method actor. His character lives polarized by three women, his empty headed wife, his dance oriented daughter, and her troubled dance teacher. How he swings among them is what matters. For how the political background intersects Bardem's emotional life, i think the story helps, but i found it a major flaw that Malkovich wasn't able to make us understand when we should really give up on the (after all) useless thriller and focus on what he sure wanted to do, which was to center us on the head of Bardem's character. I know Malkovich wanted it better, but hey, this was only his first try.The direction is uneven. We have some poorly edited dialogs which work against the actors and the fluidity of the story, and some bad choices in the scene sequences that perturb the understanding of the plot. Basic mistakes. Worse than that, some times Malkovich looses the grip and let's us, spectators, wandering about where to go next. This tense and concentrated film requires a gripping direction which Malkovich doesn't deliver consistently. But we also have pieces of honest pure and beautiful cinema, which include performances. Among these we have a dancing lesson, inter cut with the murder of three people in a theater performance, having the audience take those executions as a part of that performance. And we have the very final scene, a performance of the child, with Bardem rushing to get there. Those and other bits were truly powerful, sincere and moving. Should we have this consistency through all the film, and we'd have something really powerful.There is something particularly well done: the locations. Malkovich is known to be around Portugal often, so i imagine he chose personally most of the locations. Anyway, they always add to what he tends, they are a permanent character that en forms what we are supposed to see. In this specific point, the film is consistent all the way. I'm guessing a lot of time was put into choosing the places.My opinion: 4/5 there is a true soul behind this, despite its flaws as a film.http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

groggo I read a lot of reviews of this film, and only in a few places did I see any mention of a bizarre choice director John Malkovich made: it's set in Latin America, yet everyone speaks English with a Spanish accent. No reason is given for this, even by Malkovich himself in the DVD extras.I found this whole linguistic silliness disconcerting, jarring and disruptive, and it throws the film's credibility to the winds. I just cannot suspend disbelief when I see this on the screen. It rarely happens any more, and for good reason.It just makes no sense to have people speaking English with Spanish-and-Italian-inflected accents, while songs, newscasts, background chatter, newspapers and posters are heard and seen entirely in Spanish. It's a weird decision, and it flat-out sabotages the entire film. This kind of stuff used to be done routinely in the 1940s and 1950s with pretty laughable results (Nazis scheming to blow something up while they're all speaking to each other in sinister, cackling, heavily accented English).I'm not surprised by anything Malkovich does. He's a self-styled professional eccentric who has gained a reputation as a great actor, or perhaps artist, which is a term he would probably prefer. I've always been frankly puzzled about the buzz surrounding this guy. Down to his aristocratic, halting, midwestern (let's face it -- creepy) speech patterns, he's about as charismatic as a walnut.He's also a poster boy for pop culture's right wing, which used to be the property of people like Charlton Heston. He doesn't believe in extending time, patience or understanding for revolutionary left-wing movements, and he demonstrates it vividly in this film. I cannot help but feel that Malkovich, given his political stance, made this film as more of a statement than a work of art (which it isn't).The Dancer Upstairs is a sometimes intriguing film done in an often familiar American-style manhunt style. What's glaringly missing is any discernible background to the spectacular (and terrifying) rise of Peru's Shining Path movement (1980-92), upon which the film was based. Malkovich shows us instead a lot of footage about the hunt for the enigmatic leader of the group. Forget that the Maoist Shining Path gained so much popularity among the masses that it almost overthrew the government. If you want to know why they gained this popularity (and STILL do in some parts of Latin America), don't look to this film for answers. It's too busy with the Cult of the Personality (i.e. the leader of the group -- a solitary individual). Something very American about that. What you'll see here are a lot of crazed terrorists blowing things up real good, because, well, in Malkovich's eyes, all terrorists are crazy. End of story. I watched this movie because I'd walk across coals to see Italy's Laura Morante; both she and Spain's Javier Bardem are magnetic screen personalities. Morante is so sexy; she has a gorgeously sweet, emotive and VERY feminine face. She and Bardem team up very well here, despite more than a few lapses with dialogue that is stilted and unnatural (and for good reason: they're speaking in their second, third or perhaps even fourth language). To make matters worse, the dialogue is often American-style colloquial. Go figure. So many times, the spoken rhythms of the characters just fall flat on the screen.Not a bad movie, if you can concentrate on the visuals and the pacing and try to forget that you're supposed to suspend disbelief. Alas, it falls on its own linguistic sword, a victim of Malkovich's obsession with being different.