Parky at the Pictures (DVD 26/10/2017)

As parents Tito Vuolo and Mimi Aguglia pray at his bedside in a New York hospital, Richard Conte hovers between life and death after killing a cop during a bungled robbery. Childhood pal Victor Mature waits in the corridor with NYPD partner Fred Clark to question Conte about the incident, while shady lawyer Berry Kroeger seeks to convince him to take the rap for a murder of a woman who was tortured for her jewellery instead of the innocent man who has been arrested for the crime.

Recovering from surgery, Conte refuses to have anything to do with Kroeger and promises Mature that he had no idea that the rings found in his possession were hot, as he had won them in a crap game. No sooner has Mature left, however, than Conte charms nurse Betty Garde into taking a note to sweetheart Debra Paget urging her to go into hiding before she is arrested as his accomplice. But Kroeger refuses to take no for an answer and offers to defend Conte for the cop killing if he confesses to the jewellery slaying.

Mature, meanwhile, has gone to Little Italy to take advantage of the fact he has known Vuolo and Aguglia since he was a boy and ask if they know about Conte's love life. But he is called away when trustee Walter Baldwin helps Conte escape from thuggish jailer Roland Winters with a duplicate key after being moved to a nearby prison and Mature gets a tip that he is hiding out at Paget's apartment. Instead, he and Clark find Conte's teenage brother, Tommy Cook, and Mature is worried that he will be led astray by Conte's bad example.

Across the city, however, Conte is getting into more trouble, as he descends on Kroeger and pulls a knife while raiding his safe. A struggle breaks out when he finds the stolen jewels and the lawyer is killed by his own gun. Desperate to find a hiding place, Conte returns to the family home. But, while Aguglia wants to help her child, Vuolo orders him to leave and Conte takes refuge with old flame Shelley Winters, who takes him to unlicensed doctor Konstantin Shayne after masseuse Hope Emerson turns him away. However, Conte lets her know that he suspects her of being Kroeger's accomplice and offers to swap her the contraband for a car and $5000 in cash so he can make a getaway.

Emerson agrees to conclude the deal the following day. But Mature has managed to track down Shayn, who admits to treating a wounded fugitive in order to care for his ailing wife and a phone call to headquarters tips him off about Conte and Emerson's rendezvous. Consequently, he is waiting at the left luggage lockers at the subway station when Emerson tries to double-cross Conte by pulling a loaded gun. She is arrested, but Conte manages to slip away in the mayhem. Despite being shot in the shoulder, Mature tracks Paget down to Garde's lodgings, only to discover that she has arranged to meet Conte at the local church.

Conte has also summoned Cook and orders him to steal their mother's savings and bring them to him. As he disappears, Paget arrives and informs Conte that she no longer loves him and doesn't want to go to South America with him. Mature finds them together and urges Paget to leave. Realising he is too weak to resist, Conte surrenders his weapon. But, as they reach the street, he hits Mature and tries to limp away. In excruciating pain from his wound, Mature fires and Cook arrives back in time to see his brother lying dead on the pavement. He tells Mature that he couldn't steal from Aguglia and he bursts into tears after helping Mature into a waiting car.

Demonstrating his usual flair for capturing the look and feel of his settings, Siodmak paces this cat-and-mouse tale to perfection. He is splendidly served by Mature and Conte, who belie their reputation for stiffness by delivering performances that stand in fascinating contrast to Clark Gable and William Powell as the orphaned buddies who grow up on opposite sides of the law in WS Van Dyke's Manhattan Melodrama (1934). The support playing is also strong, with Paget, Winters, Emerson and Garde being particularly impressive as the women in Conte's life.

The message that crime doesn't pay comes over loud and clear. But Siodmak also shows that upholding the law is a dangerous and unglamorous job that sometimes puts Lieutenant Mature at odds with his own kind. However, this is much more a study of a neighbourhood and its ambience than an exercise in hard-boiled pulp, with Siodmak and Ahern making docu-poetic use of the rain-soaked tarmac and neon lighting, which is evocatively complemented by the hum of distant traffic and police sirens in the Roger Hernan and Eugene Grossman sound mix that jags beneath Alfred Newman's sublime score. Thus, while Siodmak would make more gripping thrillers, he would rarely better this masterly evocation of an urban enclave and its populace.

At the end of the two-part Family Guy episode in which Stewie Griffin appears to kill Lois on the deck of a luxury liner, Brian the dog suggests that viewers are going to be hacked off when they discover that the whole storyline has been nothing more than a simulation that Stewie has been running on a virtual reality headset to see how things would pan out if he did murder his mother. It's a fair bet, therefore, that the majority of those who plough their way through Thomas Jakobsen's The Unraveling will feel equally cheated when the truth is revealed in the final reel of this underwhelming wilderness chiller.

A year after cleaning up in rehab, Zack Gold has found himself a steady job at a warehouse and he and fiancée Cooper Harris are expecting a baby. The only problem is, Gold has been falling off the wagon and, in his desperation, he has foolishly stolen $12,000 from a dealer who is not to be messed with. Gold thinks he is about to get his comeuppance when he is bundled into the boot of a car by four burly blokes in ice hockey masks. But, having driven Gold into the back of the Californian beyond, the quartet turn out to be best pals Jason Tobias, Jake Crumbine, Bennett Viso and Bob Turton.

They announce that they have whisked him away for a weekend in the open air to make up for the fact that he bailed out on a planned trip to Las Vegas. He shrugs and hunkers down beside the campfire for a night of banter that seems designed to remind Gold that he has let his friends down on numerous occasions and that he would be an idiot to jeopardise his fresh start with Harris. Rather than stiffening Gold's resolve, however, the browbeating makes him more desperate for a fix and he sleeps late the next morning while still under the influence.

Unfortunately, Crumbine seems to have vanished from the tent he was sharing with Gold and everyone seems shaken when his body is found in the front seat of the car with a plastic bag over the head. But the others seem more certain about what to do next than Gold, who goes along on a route march into the woods even though it doesn't seem the wisest course of action. His misgivings are proved correct when they come across another corpse dangling from a branch with a sack covering the face. Naturally, Gold wonders if the drug gang is stalking them. But he is more concerned that his secret supply has disappeared.

Even he begins to fear for his friends, however, as darkness falls and the party becomes more depleted after they seek shelter in a remote log cabin. Finding himself alone, Gold staggers out of the woods and flags down a passing pick-up. But, while driver Gary Kraus seems genial enough, his mood quickly turns and Gold finds himself trussed up in the back of the truck before being deposited in what seems like a ghost town presided over by James C. Burns.

Although the debuting Jakobsen and co-scenarist Justin S. Monroe place understandable emphasis on the body count aspect of the story, what intrigues most about this perfunctory picture is the discussion of Gold's addiction. He is convinced he's clever enough to mask his deception and that Harris accepts his excuses of working extra shifts when he is out partying. Moreover, he thinks he is in control of the physical and psychological effects of his usage. But it's apparent from the first fireside chat that his mates have rumbled him and, by their stoic reaction to the noises in the night that are freaking Gold out, it's also pretty clear that some sort of conspiracy is afoot.

Weighing down the dialogue with exposition, first-time writers Jakobsen and Monroe ask a lot of their inexperienced actors in fleshing out what are essentially ciphers. They also struggle to avoid sounding a sanctimonious note, as Gold's failings are exposed in what feels like a cross between John Boorman's Deliverance (1972) and Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson's Resolution (2012). Despite the best efforts of editor Chris Witt, however, the meld of flashback and hallucination similarly fails to gel, although Milton Santiago's evocative views of the woodland are capably contrasted with the darker neon- and bonfire-lit sequences.

Once a staple of the Penultimate Picture Palace programme, The Beast (1975) earned Polish provocateur Walerian Borowczyk a reputation for smut that he reinforced with the soft-focus fumblings in Behind Convent Walls (1977), Immoral Women (1979), Emmanuelle V (1986) and Love Rites (1988). But, as he demonstrated with The Story of Sin (1976), he remained a fine film-maker, with a genius for picking up the symbolic details within the mise-en-scène and for illustrating human behaviour, as opposed to scrutinising it.

Adapted from a novel by Stefan Zeromski, this was the sole live-action picture that Borowczyk completed in his homeland. Once again, the depth of characterisation may leave something to be desired and the storyline may be pocked with melodrama. But the performances are committed and the feel for both time and place is immaculate.

Some time towards the end of the 19th century, Grazyna Dlugolecka is warned in confession by Fr Zbigniew Zapasiewicz to resist the temptations of the flesh now that she is coming of age. Her parents, Karolina Lubienska and Zdzislaw Mrozewski, are not wealthy and take in Jerzy Zelnik as a lodger. Even though he is married, Dlugolecka falls hopelessly in love with him. But, even though he is estranged from his wife, the Church refuse him a divorce. Dlugolecka is disowned when the truth about the affair becomes known and she is left alone and pregnant when Zelnik is sent to Rome on business.

While he is away, Dlugolecka drowns her baby, as she lacks the means to raise it and fears that Zelnik will abandon her if he has a child to care for. However, she learns from Count Olgierd Lukaszewicz that he wounded Zelnik in a duel that resulted in his arrest. Desperate to visit him in prison, Dlugolecka makes her way to Italy, only to discover that her lover has been released and deported. Unable to find Dlugolecka, Zelnik deduces that she has started a relationship with Lukaszewicz and remarries.

Distraught, Dlugolecka enters into a conspiracy with con men Roman Wilhelmi and Marek Walczewski to murder Lukaszewicz. Having poisoned him during love-making, however, Dlugolecka is betrayed by her confederates and is forced to work in a brothel on her return to Poland. Determined to fleece Zelnik, Wilhelmi and Walczewski track her down and try to blackmail her. But, even though, Dlugolecka now has a kindly protector, who tries to shelter her, she is still besotted with Zelnik and is shot trying to warn him he is in danger.

A far cry from the winking sauciness of The Beast, this fallen woman saga may be short on originality and finesse. But it more than atones with its intensity and compassion. Dlugolecka succumbs to love rather than lust and suffers pluckily the kind of capricious contrivances that would not have been out of place in a 1940s Hollywood potboiler rather than a notorious novel that had twice been filmed before (by Antoni Bednarczyk in 1911 and Henryk Szaro in 1933), despite being banned by the Vatican. Lukaszewicz makes a splendid adversary, but Zelnik doesn't quite cut it as love's young dream and he is scarcely missed during his lengthy absences.

Alarms bells should start ringing the moment you realise that Matthew Miele's Crazy About Tiffany's has been `fully authorised' by the famous jewellery firm that started life as a stationery store back in 1837. Those who remember Miele's previous documentary, Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf's (2013) will already know what to expect. But that fitfully revealing outing and Patrick Mark's Fabergé: A Life of Its Own feel like models of objectivity beside this vulgar, feature-length advertisement for conspicuous capitalism and vacuous celebrity that should be confined to a corner of the Fifth Avenue premises in Manhattan, where is can play like a grotesque form of votive gallery installation.

How one wishes Miele had taken the historical route, as there is much to learn from the account of how founders Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young changed the nature of their business after they invented the world's first mail-order catalogue, the so-called Blue Book. It would also be nice to learn more about Tiffany's being largely responsible for the introduction of the engagement ring in 1866 and the role played by the Empress Eugénie of France in the selection of the company's trademark blue box. Similarly, more might have been made of how Louis Comfort Tiffany began experimenting with ceramics, stained glass, enamels and metalwork when he inherited the story in 1902.

More on the genesis of the Tiffany lamp and the making of the clock at Grand Central Station would not have gone amiss, either. Or the artistry of designer Jean Schlumberger, who joined the company in 1956 and counted the Duchess of Windsor, Greta Garbo, Gloria Vanderbilt, Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy among his clients. A few more snippets about presidential patrons like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy would also have been nice, as would a more detailed discussion of how Tiffany & Co. came to create the logo of the New York Yankees baseball team from a Medal of Valour presented to NYPD officer John McDowell (who was shot in the line of duty in 1877) and how it got the commission for the Vince Lombardi Trophy that has been presented to the man of the match at the Superbowl since 1967.

Instead, Miele gives us a claque of chattering fans, including actresses Jessica Biel and Jennifer Tilly, film directors Baz Luhrmann, Rob Marshall and Sam Taylor Johnson, photographer Fran Liebowitz, fashion designers Catherine Martin and Rachel Zoe, jewellery designer Elsa Peretti, art historian Amy Fine Collins, Halston fashion director Cameron Silver, DJs AndrewAndrew and Harper's Bazaar editor Glenda Bailey. Tilly jokes about her readiness to take parts in Z grade movies to indulge her love of big jewellery, while television journalist Katie Couric gushes disarmingly about the thrill of having her 50th birthday in the store that Tiffany's first took over in 1940. But there is something depressing about watching Veronica Beard boast about the latest gift she received from her husband, while her teenage daughters Helaina and Scarlet coo about a diamond's size denoting a man's love. Neither girl is bothered about the provenance of the diamonds and Miele is in no mood to broach such a topic. But the fact he is willing to exploit his sister and nieces in such a way will leave many viewers feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

As Henry Mancinis `Moon River' meanders through proceedings, Helaina and Scarlet giggle over being in the store immortalised by Audrey Hepburn in Blake Edwards's 1963 screen adaptation of Truman Capotes's novel, Breakfast at Tiffanys. But they seem oblivious to the true nature of Holly Golightly's profession and Miele seems equally convinced that she is some form of Givenchy-clad goddess whose iconic image will forever top that of Reese Witherspoon, even though Patrick Dempsey did propose to her inside the store in Andy Tennant's Sweet Home Alabama (2002). TV shows like Friends and Sex and the City are also name-checked and there is even a tiresome digression to allow Todd Pipes to explain how he composed `Breakfast at Tiffany's' for his band Deep Blue Something in 1995. Oh for more dissenting voices like Cornell business student Erica Sutton questioning the relevance of Tiffany to anyone but America's much-resented 1%. Even a bit more on Gene Moore's window designs would have prevented this from seeming quite so vapid and insufferable.

Andreas Koefoed and Christian Bonke's Ballroom Dancer follows former World Latin Dance champion Slavik Kryklyvyy in his bid to recapture old glories with new partner Anna Melnikova. Gene Kelly once said that `dancing is a man's game' and proof positive is provided throughout this intimate profile, which reveals the pressure involved in keeping the body in peak condition, choreographing innovative routines and forging the dynamic unity that will impress the judges and turn dreams into reality. But, as Strictly Come Dancing continues to demonstrate and the Danish documentarists conclusively prove, success is as much about the psychological as the physical.

Born in the Ukraine and of fiery gypsy stock, Vyacheslav Kryklyvyy won a host of amateur ballroom titles with Joanna Leunis before turning professional and forming a partnership with Karina Smirnoff that not only saw him continue to win competitions, but also to land a guest slot in Peter Chelsom's crowd-pleasing picture Shall We Dance? (2004). However, a mix of injury, temperament and loss of inspiration dogged subsequent teamings with Elena Khvorova and Hanna Karttunen. Thus, when Kryklyvyy persuaded new lover Anna Melnikova to dance with him in 2009, he was struggling to retain his reputation, let alone recapture lost crowns.

The opening monochrome footage of Kryklyvyy and Leunis at the 2000 World Latin Dance Championships gives the audience an immediate insight into the standards he has once attained and the burden of expectation that Melnikova has to carry, as she tries to match her predecessor's brilliance and cope with the intense, short-fused perfectionism of a man whose matinee idol image belies an appetite for hard work and an obsession with victory.

But, for all his creativity and craving, determination and drive, Kryklyvyy lacks the articulacy to convey his ideas to Melnikova, whose growing disillusion with her partner's personality begins to effect her willingness to share his ambition. Consequently, an air of foreboding pervades proceedings, as the couple progress from rehearsal and hotel rooms to venues in Moscow, Blackpool and Hong Kong, where it becomes increasingly clear that Kryklyvyy simply cannot recreate the magic of yesteryear and that the problem lies with himself as much as with Melnikova.

At times, Koefoed and Bonke feel as though they are intruding upon private grief. But they also seem to protect Melnikova from the full force of Kryklyvyy's alternating frustration and fury, as she fails to deliver the level of performance he demands. The ferocity of their rows sometimes reaches a soap operatic pitch. But the pair are also capable of moments of touching tenderness and, when they do click on the dance floor, their talent is readily evident. Editors Asa Mossberg and Marion Tuor nimbly convey the kinetic energy of both the dancers and Koefoed and Bonke's lithe camerawork. Yet, thrilling though some of these sequences are, it's the off-stage encounters that make this so riveting and, ultimately, so sad.

At the height of their powers, María Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes were the finest tango dancers in Argentina. They continued to be so long after their passion had been extinguished and they had endured a divorce that left them barely capable of being civil to one another. But, as German Kral reveals in Our Last Tango, they recognised and respected the other's talent and the duty they shared to the dance that had made them famous.

Now in her eighties, Nieves recalls the Buenos Aires milongas of her youth in the late 1940s and revisits Estrella de Maldonado where she first met Copes at the age of 13 or 14. She recalls him treading on the toes of his partners and he admits he took time to hit his stride. But, as Nieves tells Juan Malizia and Ayelén Álvarez Miño, who play the couple in their youth, she couldn't get him out of her head. But a year passed before she saw him again at the Atlanta (which is now a roller-skating rink) and he had made a marked improvement. Indeed, Copes was already thinking about making a career as a dancer and he knew that he had found his Stradivarius.

Nieves puts Malizia and Álvarez through their paces in a rehearsal room with choreographer Melina Brutman before we see a reconstruction of Copes and Nieves dancing together for the first time. They have different recollections of what was said (if anything), but she recalls looking into his eyes and a wire is used to convey the sense of Nieves being swept off her feet by his dashingly handsome man. Considering she had been raised in abject poverty, with her only doll being a soda siphon with a tea towel dress, it's hardly surprising that she let herself dream. Nieves becomes teary in a studio mock-up of her old home and Francesca Santapá (as the young Nieves) and recreates her dancing to the radio with a broom before Álvarez flirts with some construction workers overlooking the backyard, as she dances in her underwear while doing the laundry and hiding coquettishly behind the sheets.

Inspired by Nieves's fond memories of seeing Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse in Singin' in the Rain (1952), Álvarez and Malizia dance on a rain-soaked bridge under the glow of the streetlights. Nieves hopes to meet Kelly in the afterlife and Malizia jokes that he resembles the pugnacious Pittsburgher, as he and Álvarez watch footage of their routine being projected on to a screen in the rehearsal room, where they had earlier perused photographs of Copes and Nieves in their pomp.

Back in the mid-1950s, however, Copes recalls tango going out of style, as dance hall owners opened their doors to Cumbia and Rock. But he corralled some of the better tango dancers and created a new style that they perfected on a factory floor, with Nieves going along with his vision because she trusted his instincts and was besotted with him. Yet, when they joined a stage show for the first time in 1955, Nieves was furious with Copes for ogling semi-naked chorus girls and he still resents the fact that she felt she owned him when he knew perfectly well that she belonged to him. Nieves insists she suppressed her jealousy and channelled it into growing as an artist, but Copes shrugs that he wouldn't have been a red-blooded male if he hadn't been tempted.

A brief routine shows a chorine coming between the partners before we see a colour home movie of Copes and Nieves dancing outdoors in what looks like the 1970s. We also see Nieves walking through Buenos Aires with her cigarette holder, as she explains that she finds it hard being old and alone, even though she has always found solitude a positive experience. Clearly, she has never fallen out of love with Copes, even though she has stopped loving him because he replaced her as both his lover and his partner.

Having conquered Corrientes Avenue, Copes wanted to take his brand of tango to New York and Leonardo Cuello comes to the studio to help Álvarez and Malizia master the tabletop `double gaucho' dance that became Copes and Nieves's signature routine. He explains how he taught her the steps in a square chalked on the floor and coaxed her into dancing on the table, even though she was terrified each time that she would fall off. We see grainy colour footage of the duo in action, as Álvarez asks Nieves why she kept putting herself through such an ordeal and she replies that all she could do was dance tango and she wouldn't do it with anyone else.

Yet, soon after they had married in Las Vegas in 1964, Copes realised that he could dance with Nieves, but not live with her. She had dreams of having a family, but he left on a tour with five female dancers and she fell into an affair with a man who treated her like a woman not a stage prop. A barefooted Álvarez dances on the shiny shoes of her new beau (Pancho Martínez Pey), while Malizia cavorts on stage with his troupe. But Copes freely admits that he felt he had proprietary rights over Nieves when it came to performing and she fell back into line when he snapped his fingers, as Alejandra Gutty and Pablo Verón demonstrate in taking over the reconstruction roles.

Now sporting Nieves's familiar dark red bob, Gutty dances with both Martínez and Verón in the hope of making her private and professional lives work in parallel. But, as Nieves explains, tango and Copes proved too demanding and she made the choice that left her alone. But Gutty looks stunned, as Nieves tells her in the back seat of a car driving through the nocturnal streets that she learned to discard men in order to survive because none of them is worth a single tear.

Despite divorcing in 1974, Copes and Nieves reunited at the Caño 14 for the Copes Tango Show, which ran for four years. Nieves shows Gutty the street where the theatre used to stand and jokes about it being a good place to meet handsome men, while Copes recalls the feeling of freedom he had when he danced her. We see archive footage of them on the tiny stage close to the audience and there isn't a hint of the backstage tension, as they perform. But Copes needed to deal with an internal rage that Nieves feared might drive him to suicide. Instead, it led him to marry non-dancer Miriam Albuaernez, who has been his wife for 42 years and has borne him two daughters.

This crossroads in their relationship is translated into a floodlit rooftop dance between Verón and Gutty. But the news of the first child hurt Nieves and she loses her temper with Kral for forcing her to talk about Copes all the time. This anger tips into a dance between Verón and Gutty over a small table in the theatre. But Nieves reveals that her mother had told her that Copes would always be her first love and her husband and this realisation made her so angry on stage that she danced with a new maturity and with less of an inferiority complex. We see them dancing on a busy street with a troupe and alone on a small stage and the chemistry is still there. But Verón notices in photographs from this period how they always look away from each other and kept more of a distance in hold.

Out of this angst came Tango Argentino, which took Broadway by storm in 1985 and Nieves admits that she was grateful for this show, as it meant she never had to worry about money again and it gave her a chance to reach a better understanding with Copes off stage. She tells Verón that the love of tango helped them sort things out and there is a grace in the ensemble routine that Gutty and Verón dance in pools of light. Even archive footage of the time shows them smiling together, although Nieves jokes that they could seethe insults at each other through clenched teeth.

However, Myriam was tiring of the partnership and gave Copes an ultimatum to ditch Nieves or lose her. So, before a tour of Japan in 1997, Copes broke the news and their televised festival performance proved to be their last and Copes watches the footage alone, while Nieves is surrounded by the rest of the cast. She gave an impromptu speech on stage about tango having been her life and she claims to have thrown up in the changing-room. But she retained her poise, as she turned and led Copes across the stage before dropping his hand as they came to the wings.

Nieves describes his treachery as being like a dagger to the heart and Álvarez, Gutty and Nieves herself dance with black-clad shadow figures to suggest her isolation and despair. But Copes felt compelled to keep dancing and daughter Johana Copes became his new partner. While she knows she is a Nieves clone, she has never sought to replace her and is glad to be able to give her 83 year-old father the nightly applause he needs to hear to make his life worthwhile. Nieves has also made solo appearances and the cheers echo around a festival stage at Luna Park (the scene of an unmentioned talent show win that set them on their way in the early 1950s), where she proves to be as nimble and sensual as ever before making an emotional reunion with Copes at the curtain call. Nieves admits to missing the tango, but Copes has no intention of retiring, as he feels driven to keep refining the dance he helped to transform.

At the start of the film, the pair had walked on to an empty stage and stood opposite each other in anticipation of another dance. But, while their hands go into hold, they separate in the closing scene and stride into the wings without even starting their last tango. This affectation seems apt, although it would be nice to know who made the decision for them not to dance, as this is the only time that they appear together in old age in the entire documentary. Clearly they had no desire to share reminiscences, although one senses that Nieves was more willing to talk that Copes and that Kral's sympathies lie more with her than with her erstwhile partner.

But, while an element of point-scoring is inevitable in any study of a broken relationship, Kral tries to maintain a level of civility. He also presumes a good deal of foreknowledge that makes it difficult for non-aficionados to piece together the Nieves-Copes chronology. Yet, while a few more dates might have been useful, this is an informative and inventive account of a formidable partnership whose use of dance as a narrative tool recalls the flamenco films of Carlos Saura and Pina, executive producer Wim Wenders's 2011 tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch. Kral might have unearthed more archive footage, but Álvarez and Malizia and Gutty and Verón dance majestically in routines that are photographed with effortless grace by Jo Heim and Felix Monti to infectious traditional tango music variously played by Luis Borda, Sexteto Mayor, Gerd Baumann, Quinteto El Descarte and Juan D'Arienzo.