Our Last Tango

Executive produced by Wim Wenders, this profile of octagenarian tango maestros María Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes is as dramatic as any backstage musical. Starting out as teenagers in Buenos Aires, the duo helped popularise this most passionate of dances and reached the peak of their international fame in the mid-1980s when Tango Argentino was nominated for a Tony award on Broadway. But, as Nieves recalls in a narrative slightly tilted in her favour, Copes strayed as both a life and a dance partner, and her recollections of the off-stage silences she endured before they ceased collaborating in 1998 are as painful as the re-creations of their famous tango and milonga routines by Juan Malizia and Ayelen Alvarez Miño are exhilarating and chic. The latter pair get the chance to interrogate Nieves about her life and technique, and she revels in playing the grande dame. But director German Kral also slips in a potted history of the tango and archive footage of classic choroegraphy like the "double gaucho" performed on tiny table tops. As much about dealing with the pain of parting as an artistic memoir, this is a bittersweet delight.