The Tango Lesson

When one person writes, directs, and stars in a film, and it's a film about that film's own making, chances are that the audience capable of appreciating that film will be limited to one as well. Such is the case with Sally Potter's The Tango Lesson, the disappointing follow-up to her inventive if uneven Orlando. Potter stars as Sally Potter, a maverick British filmmaker who is trying to swing some big Hollywood money for her new film project about fashion models, a legless designer, and a serial killer. When -- big surprise -- the studio types prove too dense for her vision, she drops the idea, takes tango lessons from real-life dancer Pablo Vernon, and drifts into a relationship with him. Then she figures, why not make a movie about a director who takes tango lessons and falls in love with her teacher?

And so on. Shot mostly in black-and-white, with longwinded meditations on the nature of dance, art, religion, and what have you, the film (within the film within the film, etc.) drones on with the humorless self-importance of Wim Wenders at his most ill-conceived and self-involved. The Tango Lesson is a misstep in Potter's career. Opens Friday at the Cable Car Cinema.

-- Peter Keough