A Weak Salsa
posted on Friday, November 09, 2007 in Movie Reviews
El Cantante is a biopic that just doesn’t sing. While it tries hard to be as lively and powerful as the music it documents, it mostly just falls flat. The movie tells the true story of Hector Lavoe, the king of Salsa music. Hector, unbelievably talented and charismatic, was the center point of the Latin music movement in the sixties and seventies. He brought Salsa into the American mainstream, selling out concerts at Madison Square Garden. Like most great musicians, however, Hector had to deal with a lot of personal demons, and the film, told mostly from the perspective of his wife Puchi, follows Hector through all of that.
Biopics are an inherently tricky business. When dealing with decades of history in a person’s life, it’s always hard to decide what gets included in the film. El Cantante seems to make all the wrong choices. The filmmakers seem to have decided that the most important thing was to focus on Puchi, the wife. Thus, the film focuses mainly on the relationship between Hector and Puchi. But there’s so many other interesting things going on with Hector Lavoe, and they all pretty much get glossed over. Some potentially powerful scenes in Hector’s life just don’t get the attention they deserve. Instead, we get Puchi flirting with Hector, or Puchi being mad at Hector. Again and again.
This seemingly poor choice in storytelling is highlighted by an overuse of montage. There’s a montage waiting at every corner in this movie, ready to quickly gloss over important events in Lavoe’s life. So when changes happen in Hector’s character, there’s no emotional impact, since whatever led up to it was barely seen for a second.
And that’s a real shame, since Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony are really good in their roles. Marc Anthony is fantastic as Levoe, capturing that simultaneous sense of showmanship and detachment. Jennifer Lopez is great as Puchi, putting on a layered, complicated performance. But one can’t shake the feeling that they’re acting out inferior scenes. It doesn’t help that the movie is so weakly shot, with weird zooms and goofy movement.
All in all, El Cantante just comes off as a poorly shot, clumsily written mess. There was a lot of potential here, but they just came up with a weak mix.
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