Chico & Rita - Blu-ray Review

'this doesn't start and stop with a fling on the dance floor, there's something much more here, with delicate relationships, capable of being stamped out in a vicious dance of death, or re-lit by fingers twinkling across ivories'

Chico & Rita - a gorgeous Spanish-language animation, charting the trials and tribulations of the titular lovers - dances with vigour through the rhythms of Cuban music to a unique beat that marks it out as a one-of-a-kind experience. Directors Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba have made something fantastically unique here; a simple, stylised film with heart, passion and a unique knack for capturing its story in song.

As Chico (Eman Xor Oña) and Rita (Limara Meneses) find their eyes meeting on the dance floor, a relationship starts, filled with fire from the off. As the tones and beats of jazz drive the heart of the film through inevitable fiery clashes and distressing situations, Errando, Mariscal and Trueba paint an involving relationship, full of a love which threatens to become all consuming.

As the action moves from the warm Cuban climes to the cold wastes of New York, the directors three impart the formula with a consideration of musical migration. Chano Pozo - a real life Latin jazz star, typifying the film's crossing of fact with fiction - arrives on US shores, announces his dominance and is promptly eliminated from the narrative. The re-appropriation of musical lineage has begun - not that that's going to prevent us from stopping frequently to breathe in as much of it as possible.

As pacey rumbas become slow waltzes, the film finds itself shot through with inevitable considerations of age and lives not lived. Like every great epic love story, this doesn't start and stop with a fling on the dance floor, there's something much more here, with delicate relationships, capable of being stamped out in a vicious dance of death, or re-lit by fingers twinkling across ivories. Heartbreaking, unique and one of the best-produced animations outside of a Pixar studio.

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'the original score by Bebo Valdés is sensational making the movie essential viewing for any jazz fan' - Fandango Groovers, 4/5