The Dancer Upstairs
2002
***½
Director: John Malkovich
Cast: Javier Bardem, Juan Diego Botto, Laura Morante, Luis Miquel Cintra
John Malkovich's directorial debut is a smart, thoughful and (perhaps slightly too) slow burning story of a detective in pursuit of a clever guerrilla/terrorist in an unspecified Latin American country. The performances are solid, although it is questionable why you need a predominantly Hispanic cast (with a varying degree of intelligibility) to perform in English. Scripted by Nicholas Shakespeare from his own novel.
