It's Latin America in the Recent Past. Agustín Rejas (Javier Bardem) is a Sergeant manning a road check. The country is corrupt with a militaristic Presidency. Rejas is a former lawyer ready for a promotion in the capital. A mysterious man with others and a dead dog in a truck escape the checkpoint. Then it's five years later. He's a police Lieutenant. With his young partner Sucre (Juan Diego Botto), he's investigating a mysterious revolutionary group led by Ezequiel. They hang dogs from the lamp posts. The violence escalates as leaders get assassinated. Yolanda (Laura Morante) is Rejas' daughter Laura's dance teacher. He begins an affair with her as he suspects her connection to Ezequiel.The non-specificity of the time and place could have been improved by weaving the real story into this movie. It doesn't have to be perfect and most movies aren't real biographies anyways. The great aspect of this is Bardem and the sense of Latin America that this projects. John Malkovich is directing for the first time and he shows some competency. It is well-made and most importantly, he focuses on Bardem. The story does leave some questions. The ballet teacher's connections to everyone is very convenient. The investigation is not that clear. I don't know how nebulous the book is but adapting may have left something out of the movie. It would help to have great clarity, and better intensity.

You've got to give John Malkovich credit for his directorial debut: instead of making some corny, expositionary thriller, he instead made this stylised, impressionistic film that eschews conventional causality and contrivance in favour of showing us just a scattering of glimpses at an elusive story. And the piece definitely has an atmosphere, but watching it, one has the feeling one might have at an art gallery, the images are powerful but lack connections, and the closed characters also give little away. The fact that the drama takes place in an unnamed South American country, and one whose inhabitants speak English in a (presumably deliberate but still bewildering) variety of accents maybe doesn't help; that in the absence of specifics, this is a story taking place in a country of the mind. It's still an intelligent and occasionally beguiling film: but I'm not convinced of the substance behind the effect.

The movie starts in a Garcia Marquez dreamy South America, or, for people versed in Italiana, like in a Fruttero and Lucentini Turin-based political thriller where esoteric philosophical notions mix with reality, but things soon hot up and, hey presto, we find ourselves in Graham Greene's 'Honorary Consul' territory. Where 'Ezechia' philosopher and revolutionary leader bear more than a little resemblance to Peru Sendero Luminoso's Abimael Guzman. It is John Malkovich's second time in the Director chair, and he deserves great credit for his decision to almost single-handedly bring Nicholas Shakespeare's novel to the silver screen. People may argue that this movie is stylistically and formally floored, I personally don't care, I loved this movie, it is absorbing with a complex, unconventional plot which makes you think. And by the end we all, like Xavier Bardem's Captain Rejas, will end up falling for vulnerable femme fatale Yolanda, beautifully played by Laura Morante. Purists may object to an English language movie set in South America and where the actors are mostly Spanish, but nowadays this seems to have became, alas, fairly common! On the whole, highly recommended!

Having seen "Being John Malkovich" recently, I expected a lot from "The Dancer Upstairs" and I have to admit that I really was enchanted by it. Even though it never says which country in South America this story is based on, it's clear that it must be Peru. There just are too many references to the rebel movement The Shining Path, president Fujimori... But it's good that it never says that it is actually Peru. There are more South American dictatorships, more rebel movements...It tells the story of an ex-lawyer who has become police officer, because he wanted justice to be done in the right way. He has to hunt down and arrest a revolutionary guerilla leader, but as he digs deeper, he'll find out that more people are actually supporting the rebels than he thought, even the people that he never suspected...What I liked so much about the movie is the way it portrays everything. It doesn't fear to show the violence committed by both sides, but also shows the beautiful side of the country (its landscapes, its culture,...). Some say this is clearly a right-wing movie and that Malkovich is right wing as well. What has the political preference of the director to do with it? This movie isn't right-wing, nor is it left-wing. It clearly shows both sides, giving you the police detective who works for the right-wing government, who falls in love with the left-wing activist.If there is one remark that I have to make, than it must be the fact that the actors didn't speak in Spanish. Now they had some weird Spanish-English accent. But all the rest was really very good. I give it an 8.5/10.