Chico And Rita [DVD]

Description

Product Description A love affair between two musicians spans six decades and numerous countries and political regimes in this animated romantic drama. In 1948, Chico (voice of Eman Xor Ona) is a hotshot jazz pianist living in Havana, where his reputation as a ladies' man nearly outshines his talent at the keyboard. One night, Chico sees Rita (voice of Limara Meneses) singing "Love For Sale" at a nightclub, and it's love at first sight, though Rita is put off by the fact Chico already has a steady girl. However, when Chico backs Rita during a talent competition held at a Havana radio station, she realizes they're musically simpatico, and her heart soon follows her creative instincts. But after a quarrel with Chico, Rita is approach by Ron, an American talent scout who says he can make her a star, and she takes him up on the offer, traveling with him to New York. Not wanting to lose Rita, Chico and his best friend Ramon head to New York City, but as Rita achieves fame and fortune in the United States, Chico finds the limelight is keeping them apart, and after returning to Cuba, the island's unstable political climate proves even better than Ron at keeping him away from Rita. CHICO AND RITA was a collaboration between filmmaker and music producer Fernando Trueba, artist and designer Javier Mariscal and animator and director Tono Errando, and features cartoon cameo appearances from a number of legendary jazz artists, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo. .co.uk Review Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal's Chico & Rita--a rhapsody of love and heartache spanning Havana and New York in the 1940s and ‘50s--is also a musical tour beneath the lights and loudspeakers of two culturally tied but politically divided cities. Chico, an aging bootblack and former pianist in modern Havana, revisits the memory of his on-off inamorata, the impossibly sexy singer Rita. Their music, which once filled pre-revolutionary dancehalls, blossoms into love--but when a slick impresario lays New York at Rita's feet, their romance turns into a lovelorn odyssey across the continent. Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Feature in 2012, Rico & Chita pours a lifetime of connoisseurship into its incidental detail: animator Javier Mariscal has rebuilt 1950s New York, from the steaming drains up, as an outsider’s impression of the city--satin skyscrapers towering above the light-studded glamour and tropical bustle of Midtown Manhattan. The entirely diegetic score--classics from Thelonious Monk and Dizzie Gillespie, as well as new work from legendary composer Bebo Valdés--conjures up a belle époque of Americana: a time when American music, movies and cars were--or must have seemed to arriving Cubans--in their moment. Eventually, Chico makes it to New York, bought in by the tide of Latin influences lapping at the East coast, and pursues his career and his girl through the city’s seedy nightclubs and glitzy dance halls. But where American and Cuban styles seem to mix with an airy affinity, their politics sag heavily behind--and Chico and Rita’s careers founder on racial boundaries abroad and revolutionary upheaval back home. A happy ending looks cruelly unlikely, but don’t give up--a remarkable late-career comeback might just be on the cards. --Leo Batchelor