RUMBA - DVD review

I like movies with lots of yellow.

I like movies with lots of dancing.

I just wished I like "Rumba" (2008) a little more.

The leads are certainly likeable enough. Fiona (Fiona Gordon) teaches English to French students and she beams even when the kids fail miserably to repeat: "Around and round his ration of rice, my dog rowdily runs." Dom (Dominique Abel) is a gym teacher who runs his students ragged as they rowdily run around and round the playground.

Fiona and Dom are only teachers by day. By night they rumba for fun, they rumba for prizes; they rumba just for the sheer joy of it. Long, gangly and a little ungainly, the two make a perfect match on and off the dance floor. Gordon looks like a genetic splice of Tilda Swinton and Shelley Duvall while Abel looks like a cross between Don Knotts and something unidentifiable.

The opening sequence promises such greatness. Once the school bell rings (sending both students and teachers running home with glee) the two meet in the now abandoned gym to practice their moves for the dance contest tomorrow. They aren't great dancers, but they've got heart and Gordon's long, lanky legs are an attraction all by themselves. Cruel irony there, as you'll soon learn. They jitter and juke and in the finest shot in the movie, they lie on the ground and trace circles in tandem a la Curly of the Three Stooges. If you're not smiling by now, you're obviously just in a grumpy mood.

Soon happiness turns to tragedy though when they're injured in an accident. Dom loses his memory, and Fiona loses her left leg, soon to be replaced with a wooden one. Rumba contests are now a distant, bittersweet memory but the intrepid couple soldiers on, facing each impending disaster (and there are many) with a smile, or at least with fatalistic serenity.

There's very little dialogue in the movie which is really a collection of comedy bits some of which, quite naturally, work better than others. There's an acrobatic piece involving an attempt to change clothes while driving and a funny bit with a lightly brain-damaged Dom running the kids through traffic.

But a lot of the comedy seems very forced, not just within the context of the very thin storyline, but within each skit. The choreography just isn't as free and easy as it needs to be if the filmmakers aspire to follow in the footsteps of semi-silent comedians like Jacques Tati. In the house fire that forms the centerpiece of the movie, Dom carries Fiona whose leg has a caught fire. He jabs her leg awkwardly at the curtains so they'll catch fire because that's what they have to do for the bit to go on.

Abel and Gordon, who co-wrote and directed the film along with Bruno Romy, also milk a lot of comedy out of Dom's amnesia which, as multiple film examples have proven, simply isn't funny and is even mildly offensive though that's certainly not the intent in this sweet, if occasionally sad, movie.

The color scheme is one of the film's strengths with lots of bright yellows, reds and blues that give the film the look of a live action cartoon at times. Their costumes are great and Abel and Gordon make them the central element of several scenes. Both of them are forcibly disrobed (though with undies intact) on separate occasions.

Abel and Gordon are a fantastic screen couple and they are so darned close to making things work, that I think with a little practice they're almost certain to make a great film one day. They have just recently made the transition from stage act to feature film-making and they just need to tack on a few more good ideas to go with their good chemistry.

VIDEO

The film is presented in an anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer. The interlaced transfer offers mediocre image resolution and combing is particularly a problem in dancing sequences when the characters look a little blurry at times. The color saturation is adequate, but not quite as strong as we would like for a film that relies so heavily on its bright color scheme. Overall, the transfer is OK.

AUDIO

The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and Dolby 5.0. Optional English subtitles support the sparse French audio.

EXTRAS

The only extras are Deleted Scenes (5 min.) and Outtakes (10 min.)

FILM VALUE

It's a shame there isn't a little more rumba in "Rumba" because the dance scenes are all wonderful. It's obvious that Abel and Gordon have worked together for a while (on stage and now screen) because they play off each other with ease. Unfortunately, only a few of the skits are choreographed with similar ease. The rest is a work in progress. They've got time. And I look forward to watching their next effort.