Dancing At The Blue Iguana

Rating:
Summary: Almost real
Review: As a real life exotic dancer I was impressed with this films rawness and nonglamourization of the business. Most of the characters depicted in the film remind me of girls I know, real strippers. It's not a happy ending and the loneliness felt throughout is something that most women who do this job struggle with. I also love that most of the actresses in the film were a little older which I think lent to the sense of sadness. It's a sad thing to see a 30 something dancer who has no other prospects in life and is just struggling to live. I strongly recommend this film to anybody who wants a taste of how desolate the world of stripping is.

Rating:
Summary: It's the acting that counts
Review: (...) The very convincing acting outside the strip club counted far more than their perhaps less than comprehensive stripping performance. The whole point of the movie was to not pigeonhole strippers and the excellent acting definitely dovetailed with that. If it's the stripping you're looking for, go get porn. This movie is far too rich to be faulted by something as trivial as 'stripping authenticity'.

Rating:
Summary: just purely terrible
Review: ...in which a group of moderately talented big name movie actresses get somebody to film their improv class. Said class apparently exists to allow them to fulfill their fantasies of being strippers, a lifestyle they interpret with all the eloquence and passion you'd expect from poorly educated, not very bright in the first place young women who've skated through life on their looks.

Rating:
Summary: Thin, slow -- too much time for too little substance.
Review: Dancing at the Blue Iguana and the disastrous B. Monkey combine to suggest that director Michael Radford's success with Il Postino was a fluke.

Despite a good cast that includes Daryl Hannah, Charlotte Ayanna and the terrific Sandra Oh, Dancing... is a lumberous, uninspired look at a life in stripping. What's achieved is not a documentary feel -- well-crafted documentaries, such as Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, are deliberately paced and meticulously edited to tell their story efficiently. Dancing... simply looks and feels unedited, events unfolding in excruciating real time. What the actors talk about tends to ramble on and on as things tend to do in improvisations and unfortunately, Radford also chose to shoot many of these scenes in extended two-shots allowing for no chance to compress scenes and move them along. Add that to the ever-atrocious acting of Jennifer Tilly and too long a running time, and it's yet another "stripper story" without enough to say.

It's too bad Radford didn't bother to look at his improvisational workshops and actually craft a sharp, well-thought-out script from what the actors bring to the table, because there are quite a few good performers in here. They just needed thematic focus and better pacing, and without the guiding force of an overarching narrative, Dancing at the Blue Iguana simply rambles on.

Rating:
Summary: A Daring Chance for All Involved..and It Works!
Review: How refreshing to see a film that is made as a group effort, that gives as much credibility to the Director (Michael Radford) as it does to the actors (Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly, Sheila Kelly, Charlotte Ayanna, Elias Kosteas, and Sandra Oh) and to the camera men, costumers, etc. This is a tough slice of life to examine - the sordid existence of the women who work the strip joints in the San Fernando Valley - and the technique of using the improvisational style greatly enhances the feeling of reality.

Each of the characters in this dark film were given enough information about their character to have an outline which they then fleshed out into the richly three dimensional characters we see on the screen. This takes great courage on the part of a director, but given the quality of talent involved, the payoff is well worth it. Sandra Oh gives a thrilling performance of a poet-by-day/stripper-by-night and finally has a venue for showing how richly talented she is. Daryl Hannah turns in a wholly believeable bravura performance as a less than bright yet tender and near delusional young woman in search of a life that makes sense. Jennifer Tilly gives an over the edge portrayal of a leather-type who perhaps holds more aching tenderness beneath her tough shell that she herself knows. Sheila Kelly's character just smolders. All of the actresses have the courage to 'bear it all' in the dance sequences and we can only applaud their commitment to Michael Radford's sense of style.

This is a much overlooked little movie that will probably surface in the art houses on a routine basis as a film ahead of its time.

Rating:
Summary: Where's the soundtrack?
Review: I enjoyed this movie. The acting is good and it did seem a bit slow, but I was always interested to see what happen next. But I have searched for any listing of the songs that were featured and have failed to find them. Why wasn't the soundtrack for this movie released? Great songs!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully done
Review: I thought this was a well done film. All of the characthers have depth. My favorite was Jennifer Tilly's character Jo. She played her character brilliantly. This is her best if not one of her best dramatic performences.

Rating:
Summary: Dancing at the Blue Iguana
Review: If you haven't seen this movie and experienced the music you are missing out. Raw, true emotion flows from each character while at the same time your caressed with the phenomenial music selection chosen for this movie.

I'd really enjoy the full soundtrack or list of music and artists used to create the waves of emotion I felt through this entire movie.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Look at the Underbelly
Review: It is always a pleasure to come across an American film which, instead of showing people shooting each other or blowing things up, simply attempts to recreate in a truthful way a slice of life. For that alone, I give this film all the credit in the world, but, despite the superb acting performances, the film is not completely successful. For one thing, there is not much of a plot to speak of--much less a cohesive, unifying theme--and some of the scenes swerve dangerously close to being overly melodramatic.

Nevertheless, the film is enormously successful in the way it portrays the Blue Iguana, a strip-joint somewhere on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and the down-and-out characters who inhabit it. It looks like it got all of the details right.

Jasmine, for example, runs into an enthusiastic bar patron on the outside. Her parting epithet is, "Stay high!" This is exactly the kind of thing someone like her would say. Another girl, also outside, gets sick on the sidewalk while her boyfriend, standing alongside, makes no effort to help her, ineffectually muttering, "Are you all right?" over and over again. As glamorous as these girls are inside of the place, none of them look pretty or even make any effort to look pretty outside of it. All of them smoke incessantly, carry a little flask of booze around with them, smoke dope regularly, and take pills. Angel, in fact, spends the entire film wandering around in a drug-induced haze. None are terribly bright or educated. It becomes clear that all of them have very low self-esteem.

The acting, from the larger to the smaller roles, is superb. Darryl Hannah captures the vacant, hazy, innocent stupidity of her character perfectly. Also excellent was the actress who played Neko, who onstage is a confident, powerful, strutting symbol of brazen sexuality, but who offstage is just an ordinary looking, chain-smoking, washed-out blonde; hanging around the joint at 3:00am because she has nowhere else to go. Robert Wisdom, as the club manager, brings a great deal of nuance to his role, one which could have easily sunk into stereotype. He's so natural that it hardly seems like he's acting.

The best performances though, are that of Jennifer Tilly and Sandra Oh. You can say whatever you want about Jennifer Tilly, but this is an actress who is not afraid to take chances. Her Jo is a loud, unattractive, crass vulgarian, constantly at war with her co-workers over respect she craves but which she will never earn. She is not the kind of girl who sinuously purrs her way onstage, not her. She is the one who stomps on stage, whooping it up. Hers is not a complex role, but it nevertheless is a very demanding one, and she nails it. It should also be noted that there are not a lot of actresses out there who would be willing to take on a role like this. This is no "Pretty Woman."

Sandra Oh is also magnificent as Jasmine, the pseudo-caretaker of these girls, as she is the one person among them with some common sense and a degree or two of intelligence. In fact, outside of the place she attends poetry readings, and is even coerced into reading some of her own. There is a superb moment of recognition on her face when her new-found boyfriend convinces her that he wants to kiss her because of her poetry. It suddenly occurs to her that she can be seen by another human being as something more than a mere sex object. She is a poet!

But her moment of grace is fleeting, as her co-worker and then her boss drag her inexorably back to the dreary life she has lazily carved for herself. Her last dance, done for the boyfriend poet, and to the beautiful Moby song with the refrain, "This is goodbye," is absolutely heartbreaking. (And would have been even more so without the tears.)

But this scene is a good example of the overdone melodrama in the film also. The movie would have you believe that this is the end of their relationship, but the fact is, life is not always this neat. In real life, our lovesick poet would come mooning around after her--nobly trying to save her probably--or maybe she'd sneak back into one of his poetry readings. And the subplot with the Russian hit man was way over the top. Why drag a hit man into this? Totally unnecessary.

On the whole, though, this is a very entertaining and serious-minded look at one of the seamy elements of society, done in a way that does not glorify or grossly sentimentalize its subject. A fine film.

Rating:
Summary: A haunting, thought-provoking slice of life
Review: OK, so Dancing at the Blue Iguana features wall-to-wall naked gyrating women. But don't let that put you off. Despite the subject matter - the lives of five strippers who work in the eponymous club (played by Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly, Sheila Kelley, Charlotte Ayanna and Sandra Oh) - and the frequent nudity, Blue Iguana is not a T&A movie. Rather, it's a compelling insight into the lives of the underclass of Los Angeles, or indeed, any one of the world's major cities.

If your cinematic tastes run to tightly plotted fare where all the loose ends are tied up with a big gift-wrap bow in the last five minutes, you'll probably it find frustrating. But if you can appreciate a film in which some issues are never quite resolved and some questions are never quite answered - just like real life - then you may be seduced by the Blue Iguana.

The film has been panned by so many critics that I must admit I started watching the DVD with some trepidation, expecting to be embarrassed for the actors. But I became so engrossed in the world of the Blue Iguana that I was actually disappointed when the film ended.

The DVD is very professionally produced. Features include a commentary from director Michael Radford; a second commentary from stars Sheila Kelley, Sandra Oh and Robert Wisdom (who plays the Blue Iguana boss Eddie); Strip Notes, a documentary by Daryl Hannah on how she researched her character in the LA strip club Crazy Girls; and some deleted takes and alternative scenes.

Much of the criticism of Blue Iguana is based on the fact that it was made without a script. The actors started with only two things: the title of the film and the fact that it was set in a strip club. Everything else, they worked out themselves - their characters, their storylines, and their dialogue - in an intense series of improvisational workshops. This approach may be unconventional, but it gives Blue Iguana a freshness and immediacy which is rarely found in mainstream films. As Michael Radford explains in the director's commentary, improv relies on nailing the scene in the first take; once it becomes too polished, it loses its sense of realism.

The female cast has been another target for critics - not because they're not superb actors, but because, in their late 30's to early 40s, Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly and Sheila Kelley would be too old to work as strippers in LA where beautiful young women exist in a buyer's market. But they bring a depth of sadness to their characters - you can't help wondering where they'll be a few years down the track.

Sandra Oh's performance as Jasmine is a standout. Jasmine leads a double life, stripping on the Blue Iguana stage and secretly writing poetry in the dressing room. After persuading her to read one of her painfully beautiful works at his poetry group Dennis (Chris Hogan) starts to fall in love with her mind. But Jasmine realises the fledgling romance is doomed. In the film's most heartbreaking scene, when Dennis seeks her out at the club, she performs her routine to Moby's "Porcelain" with its haunting refrain "So This is Goodbye". The camera focuses on her face. It's an impassive mask, but her eyes betray incredible sadness. She's wordlessly saying to him, "This is the real me. Do you still want me now?"

Putting aside its improv-based development, Blue Iguana succeeds on its own merits. If you want to see a T&A film, rent a copy of Showgirls. If you want to see a haunting, thought-provoking slice of life, get hold of the DVD of Dancing at the Blue Iguana.