The Tango Lesson review

Orlando was a witty and daring film, but Sally Potter's follow-up - The Tango Lesson, in which she plays herself learning to dance - is a colostomy bag of self-indulgent wish-fulfilment. The story (she goes to Buenos Aires and falls in love with sexy Argentine teacher Pablo Veron) is pure soap opera hokum, filmed in arty black and white. Ex-dancer Potter is quite sexy for an older woman (Aunt Sally, as it were), but her acting is awkward, stilted and she's so hopelessly frail you feel she might snap in Veron's arms. There's nothing inherently wrong with egotistical movie-making, and this film does have a neat, naturalistic feel that makes you aware of the guiding intelligence behind it. But Potter takes her post-modernism too far by playing herself, and badly at that. When a director thinks she's the only person who can portray a part (even when she can't act), then she's really lost the plot completely.