Our Last Tango is director’s love note to the dance
TIFF documentary follows famed partners Maria Nieves and Juan Carlos Copes
Filmmaker German Kral, a native of Buenos Aires, has always been fascinated by the abundance of skilled, older Argentine tango dancers.
“There are such great old dancers who still dance so well,” says Kral, of his decision to seek out a protagonist worthy of a 90-minute documentary.
He found those stars in longtime dance partners Maria Nieves and Juan Carlos Copes — considered the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire of tango, who took it from the clubs to the world’s stages in over 50 years of dancing together.
Their show Tango Argentino ran on Broadway.
Their story, Our Last Tango, premiered at TIFF and has a final showing Friday before going to Japan, Germany and Argentina.
Although they were lovers for years, the fiery couple often split up or were at odds with each other, says Kral.
“It was like dynamite, but they never stopped dancing.”
Finally, after Copes had married a woman 20 years his junior and became a father, he dropped Nieves from his act.
“She was over 60 years old. She had never had another partner. Her life was destroyed,” says Kral, who developed a deep friendship and respect for Nieves, now in her 80s. “After talking with her for 30 seconds, I knew she had to be in the film. I just loved her.
“For me, it is so important to like the person because you spend so much time, so much effort, so much pain (making a film.)”
Copes was more difficult to persuade, but Kral was able to interview him and his wife as well as mas- termind one last meeting, on a stage, of the estranged dance couple.
Although he’d been hoping they’d dance together, he was gratified the meeting was friendly and he was able to show them together as elderly people.
Younger dancers portray the couple at various times in their lives as well as dancing their story for the screen.
Original choreography was created for the movie as well as music composed by Luis Borda and Sexteto Mayor. Sony is releasing the soundtrack.
The movie isn’t so much the love story between the two dancers, says Kral, “but their love of the tango.” A love he shares. Kral studied film in Germany with Wim Wenders, who is one of the executive producers of the film. Scotiabank Theatre, Friday, 9:45 p.m.