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El Cantante

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Cert: 15

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Dir: Leon Ichaso. Cast: Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, John Ortiz, Manny Perez, Vincent Laresca, Nelson Vasquez, Federico Castelluccio

 

Description: Biopic charting the rise and fall of salsa legend Hector Lavoe, who died of AIDS after a long and turbulent relationship with drugs. Hector leaves behind '60s Puerto Rico to pursue his fortunes in the cultural melting pot of New York, where he falls under the spell of Puchi. Signed to the Fania record label, Hector joins forces with trumpeter Willie Colon to create a new music style fusing merengue, salsa and jazz. Hector's burgeoning success on the stage with his big band contrasts sharply with his increasing reliance on narcotics to unleash his creativity.

Country: US. 2006. 114mins

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Dance class with J-Lo in El Cantante

 

Other half: Jennifer Lopez plays the 'homely and vulgar' wife of salsa king Hector Lavoe

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A jittery biopic about Puerto Rican salsa legend Hector Lavoe, El Cantante will not be to everyone’s taste. A J-Lo vehicle that she herself seems to have lost interest in, it’s been sitting on the shelf since 2006. But don’t let a little dust put you off.

In the first scene, which sets the faux-documentary mood, we see Lopez Acting. She overacts quite a bit, yet what she and the film-makers are trying to do is difficult. She plays Lavoe’s wife, Puchi, who met him before he was famous and hung on for the ride. Shrill, stroppy, oppressively supportive and not averse to the odd snort of coke, she struggles to be taken seriously by the world at large.

She is too New York for Lavoe’s relatives, she is too female for his musician pals. A marginal figure who refuses to stay in the shadows, she’s too much altogether, so it’s fitting that Lopez herself sometimes grates.

Convincing both as a teen and as a grizzled middle-aged woman, she makes every costume change (there are 50!) work. She is also the perfect foil for the film’s real star: pop singer Marc Anthony (Lopez’s real-life husband) is magnetic as Lavoe. All bulging eyes and boyish confusion — he moves like an anorexic snake — it is nevertheless easy to believe in the man’s charisma and talent. Anthony, who has a fine voice, interprets Lavoe’s songs with feeling. He is also a subtle actor. We have no trouble accepting that Lavoe slept around, loved guns and — even before he became addicted to heroin — made Puchi and their son’s life difficult. His insecurities wax and wane, yet Anthony never telegraphs the mood swings. A scene involving Lavoe, Puchi and their break-dancing son is horrible precisely because it begins on a such a convincingly sweet note.

The film did not go down well in the US. The charge — apart from the fact that Lopez and Anthony, being New Yorkers, know nothing about salsa, and that Puchi was a “homely, vulgar woman” who deserted Lavoe when he needed her most — is that it provides a “negative” view of the Latino community by focusing on Lavoe’s drug use and death from Aids.

In fact, Lopez deserves praise for pushing this project. The recently deceased Puchi (who helped generate the script and pushed for Lopez to play her) is not the kind of character you see on screen every day. She has not been whitewashed and neither, thank goodness, has her husband. Let’s save positive films for the tourists and keep meaty dramas for ourselves.

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