Chico & Rita

Movie Review

 

GKids.TV and Luma Films

The fictional couple Chico and Rita mingle with real-life jazz legends in this animated film set in Havana.

A Pianist and a Honey-Throated Chanteuse in the Heart of Havana

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: February 9, 2012

Sexy, sweet and laced with a sadness at once specific to its place and time and accessible to anyone with a breakable heart, “Chico & Rita” is an animated valentine to Cuba and its music. Shuttling between Havana and New York and conveying the blend of soul and scholarship that signifies true jazz devotion, the film brings alive an almost unimaginably rich and resonant moment in musical history. The fictional couple at its heart — star-crossed lovers and sometime artistic collaborators — encounter bad luck in various forms, but Chico and Rita also have the good fortune to mingle with real-life legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk and the great Cuban conga player Chano Pozo, a crucial figure in the era’s mixing of styles and genres.

More About This Movie

Pozo died a violent death in Harlem in 1948, an event that injects a jolt of surreal gangster brutality into “Chico & Rita.” The movie was directed by Fernando Trueba, a filmmaker responsible for the crucial Cuban-jazz documentary “Calle 54”; Javier Mariscal, a Spanish artist and designer; and Tono Errando, Mr. Mariscal’s brother. It is a piquant collage of moods and colors, its buoyant fantasies shadowed by tragedy and loss.

A whole palette of feeling — whimsy and pain, longing and laughter — can be experienced in the music, which combines a few vintage tunes with new compositions by Bebo Valdés, the great Cuban-born pianist and composer. Mr. Valdés, now 93, is also the physical and biographical inspiration for Chico (voiced by Emar Xor Oña), whom the film imagines in his vigorous prime and also in dignified old-age obscurity, shining shoes and sipping rum in a shabby Havana apartment.

Havana itself appears in the same kind of double vision, its crumbling present-day streets giving way to the gaudy carnival of prerevolutionary decadence. In those days Chico and his roly-poly manager, Ramón (Mario Guerra), bounce from rough-edged nightclubs to swank hotels, looking for creative and sexual opportunities. One night he is smitten by a caramel-skinned, blue-eyed, honey-throated chanteuse named Rita (who speaks in the voice of Limara Meneses and sings in the sublime cadences of Idania Valdés). She catches Chico’s eye and ear, and they begin a love affair that will encounter the full melodramatic range of reversals and obstacles. Chico’s jealous girlfriend, his roving eye, a sugar-daddy promoter from up north, and antiphonal political forces named Jim Crow and Fidel Castro — all conspire to keep the lovers apart and the audience’s eyes damp.

If “Chico & Rita” does not quite communicate the full passion of its story, this is mainly because of the limits of the movie’s graphical style, which emphasizes the undulating sensuality of bodies and faces at the expense of emotional precision. The real life of the animation is in the backgrounds, especially the streets of Havana, which are exquisitely rendered and meticulously colored. The filmmakers spent several months shooting on location in Havana, and their care produces a vision of the place that is both lyrical and realistic.

The movie strives for a similar balance, evoking a tradition of show-business romanticism at least as old as the first version of “A Star is Born” (and as fresh as “The Artist”) even as it takes note of some of the cruel facts of history. Chico and Rita, both Cubans of African descent, must deal with discrimination and exploitation as they pursue fame, fortune and artistic fulfillment.

“Chico & Rita,” nominated for an Academy Award as the best animated feature, is a reminder not only of the aesthetic vitality of hand-drawn, two-dimensional animation, but also of the form’s ability to provide entertainment and enlightenment for adults. A costume drama or a documentary would not have been as charming or as surprising. It would be hard to get cameo appearances from Charlie Parker or Marlon Brando, and the dutiful literalism of historical filmmaking would have dampened the vitality and killed the magic.

Chico & Rita

Directed by Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal and Tono Errando; written by Mr. Trueba and Ignacio Martínez de Pisón; animation direction by Manolo Galiana; edited by Arnau Quiles; music by Bebo Valdés, songs performed by Mr. Valdés, Idania Valdés, Estrella Morente, Freddy Cole, Jimmy Heath, Pedrito Martínez, Michael Phillip Mossman, Amadito Valdés, Germán Velazco, Yaroldi Abreu and Rolando Luna; produced by Christina Huete, Santi Errando, Martin Pope and Michael Rose; released by GKIDS and Luma Films. At the Angelika Film Center, Mercer and Houston Streets, Greenwich Village. In Spanish, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. This film is not rated.

       

WITH THE VOICES OF: Limara Meneses (Rita), Emar Xor Oña (Chico) and Mario Guerra (Ramón).