Search - El Cantante on DVD

A Solid Movie

Fernando | Seattle, WA USA | 12/08/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I am not a J-Lopez fan, not much of today's salsa fan and I consider Mark Anthony a great salsa singer but only a tepid actor. Having established that, I love '70s salsa (salsa that you could dance AND listen to) and grew up listening to Hector Lavoe. After watching this movie I realized that I had in fact caught -quite by accident- perhaps the last radio interview Lavoe gave before he died in the early `90s. None of the drama here got was even hinted at during that radio interview and the movie explains why.

J-Lopez is by far the most over-rated celebrity ever but in this movie she gives an unimpeachable performance, she's solid. In the first two minutes she draws you in and the movie manages to show her different sides, inconsistencies and develops her into a complex character. Mark Anthony earns his money too; he's funny and introspective. Director Leon Ichaso is hit-and-miss in recreating the characters' torrid relationship but made a beautifully artsy movie; it was good to FINALLY see a director using the palate of Caribbean colors to full effect in film.

There are a few duds in El Cantante though, and they cost it a few stars.
1) The film runs longer than it needs to; after a while it begins to rehash and overkill the points it's trying to make.
2) "Puchi" (Lopez) is supposed to be a feisty yet uneducated girl from the barrio but her dialogue is often above her experience, as if she had years of therapy and has all kinds of insights to share. I loved her part of the script but it is above the experience the character is supposed to have had.
3) The use of fragmented scenes bespeaks of Lavoe's losing sight of reality through drug use, but it is overdone and sometimes without clear purpose. It also runs -inexplicably- throughout the movie, not just after Lavoe's first use of hard drugs.
4) Lavoe sang a lot about social issues (i.e. "Juanito Alimana") but this gets no mention in the movie.
5) Anthony is a great salsa singer in his own right but his sounds NOTHING like Lavoe's nasally/throaty voice. Either sing like him or dub someone who does.
6) One is led to believe that Lavoe's partner, Willie Colon, faded into obscurity after leaving the combo. In fact, Colon hooked-up with Ruben Blades and became even more famous than Lavoe ever was. He then went solo and recorded his own songs. I confess I didn't even know Lavoe and Colon had collaborated so closely originally, since Blades/Colon were THE legendary duo, recording perhaps the most famous salsa classics together. This movie was made not because Lavoe was the most famous salsa singer but because of the tragedies in his life.
7) Salsa does get overplayed in the movie. Yes, it sets the mood but this is supposed to be a drama, not 1/4 music video. A nitpicky aspect is that while the wardrobe is exquisitely adapted to the '70s and '80s, many of the salsa dance moves are blatantly contemporary. This won't be lost on anyone who dances salsa.

I have traveled a lot and from South Africa to London to Moscow to Japan, salsa is danced in ballrooms everywhere. For crying out loud, there was even a salsa combo in the early '90s of Japanese musicians ("La Orquesta de la Luz") who sang salsa in Spanish! This movie is about how that revolution started and how one of its most prominent singers became a victim of his own success.

A very solid 3 1/2 stars, finally an American-Latin movie with nuance (not many of those) but with a little way to go still. May there be more.

Saludos!
"