“There’s much misunderstanding about the origins of tango. In Uruguay, they say it’s Uruguayan, and in Argentina they say it’s Argentine. But it’s actually from the eastern border of Finland. The shepherds who remained with the cattle originally started singing tango to keep the wolves away from the cattle. And also because they felt lonely. Slowly, people started to dance tango at the dance halls by the lakes. It was 1850, and by 1880 it reached the west coast. Then the sailors took it to Buenos Aires, the locals heard it from the sailors’ bars, and it suddenly became popular also in Argentina”, says no less than celebrated Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki at the beginning of German director Viviane Blumenschein’s enjoyable documentary Tango de una noche de verano (Summer Night Tango), where three Argentine musician friends embark on a welcoming, pleasant musical voyage to actually find out if Finland is the home of tango.
Kaurismäki also says he’s a little angry at Argentines for “forgetting” the true origins of tango. In turn, one of the travelling musicians says it drives him crazy to hear Finns saying that tango belongs to them. But neither the filmmaker nor the musician show real anger. Each insists that the other party is wrong. So, with the excuse of knowing “who the inventor is,” Blumenschein’s smartly and playfully starts to expose a wide range of facets of tango — be it Argentine or Finnish — that speak not only of its musicality, but above all of its emotional, spiritual nature.
As gifted singer Chino Laborde and guitar player Dipi Kvitko, from Duo Tango Tango, alongside brilliant bandoneonist Pablo Greco, start their trip to rural Finland, meeting great Finnish musicians with an equal love for tango, such as Reijo Taipale, Sanna Pietiainen and M.A. Numminen, a new universe — both melancholic and serene — unfolds.
Though Tango de una noche de verano resorts to the usual interviews, descriptive location shots, rural and urban day and night scenes, rehearsals and musical routines, it does so with unusual narrative fluency, capturing the affective quality of the spoken word and body language, employing melody as a soothing homogenizing element, and portraying an environment of natural beauty with a discreet pictorial edge.
There’s also a slightly infectious sense of humour that allows the most intimate moments to surface in a very spontaneous manner, and soon you realize that, while all the background on Finnish versus Argentine tango is indeed appealing in itself, what matters the most is getting to know these individuals with their singularities and their common love for a kind of music that makes people feel closer, and more alive.
As one of the Finnish musicians says: “You could say that before cell phones, Finnish people used to speak so little that tango was indispensable. Man wouldn’t dare to say a woman he loved her. So tango brought them closer without talking.”
Production notes:
Tango de una noche de verano (Argentina, Germany, 2012). Written and directed by Viviane Blumenschein. Produced by Gebrueder Beetz, Gema Films, DF/3sat and Illume Ltd. Running time: 84 minutes.
