Review: Folk dancing of ‘Argentina’ on lively display in documentary

The performance films of Spanish director Carlos Saura — which include “Carmen,” “Tango,” “Flamenco,” its aptly named sequel “Flamenco, Flamenco” and now “Argentina” — are some of musical cinema’s most sacred and sensual offerings. Like invitations to a private arena of color, song and dance, they leave cultural context to more explicitly educational music-based movies, and focus instead on the pure vibrancy of the artists on-screen, combined with the rich studio-bound atmosphere Saura creates for them. Somewhere between concert and documentary, their capacity to enchant is entirely their own.

The arrival of a new one, then, is like an old, connected friend (and Saura is now 84) returning to introduce you to another musical style he’s always enjoyed, and the practitioners who keep it beautifully alive. In the case of “Argentina,” it’s that South American country’s steeped folk tradition, namely the earthy, poetic styles and dances of the poorer, indigenous north. The tunes, sung in Spanish, often speak of hard living in a hard land, the ache of leaving, and the permanence of the region in the soul of the singer.

The musicians, who fill the frame like sage storytellers, play their instruments — guitars, bombo drums, piano — with a magnetic yet simple authority. The dances, sometimes balletic in nature, or tango-like in the gracefully flirtatious, gently-stomping movements of a woman and a handkerchief-wielding man circling each other, bring a fluid physical expression to the lilting melodies and patient percussion.

Saura’s curatorial skill is in showcasing the music’s breadth and the performers’ passion with the surest and subtlest of design choices, whether a saturated backdrop in yellow or red to create dynamic silhouettes, a collection of tables and chairs to suggest a café, or carefully placed mirrors. (The movie was shot in a huge barn outside Buenos Aires in the La Boca barrio.) Though not working this time with his frequent cinematographer for these projects, the painterly genius Vittorio Storaro, Saura has a more-than-capable back-up in Brazilian Félix Monti (2009’s “The Secret in Their Eyes”), who gives “Argentina” its vivid interplay between color, light and movement.

But that same presentational skill of Saura’s is not necessarily geared toward feeding any informational curiosity you might have about the traditions, or even the featured artists. Foreknowledge of the movie’s highlighted music and the people on-screen will probably deepen the experience of watching “Argentina,” but for the uninitiated, the absence of identification — save textual mention of the style on display, be it cueca, vidala, chacarera or zamba — may be frustrating. The only times Saura clues us in to who we’re seeing are in a pair of tributes to passed folk music giants: nueva canción icon Mercedes Sosa, shown in performance footage projected to a group of desk-bound children, and her forebear in ethnographic homage, Atahualpa Yupanqui, heard singing the haunted, spiritually doubting and openly political lament “Preguntitas sobre Dios” over a black-and-white photograph of him.

Otherwise this is an expertly deejayed party without name-tags (until the credits), which on some level may be an appropriate manifestation of a shared, passed-down music that defines something collective about a people. There’s plenty of time for YouTube or Wiki scholarship later, when you can better get to know such accomplished performers as Soledad Pastorutti, pianist-composer Lito Vitale, guitarist Luis Salinas and singer Liliana Herrero. But as you watch “Argentina,” it truly is about the all-as-one: the music, the dance, the light Saura provides, and the illumination these performers bring themselves.

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‘Argentina’

In Spanish with English subtitles

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles