In a way, this is a filmed record of Antonio Gades's flamenco ballet (i.e., ballet with shoes) based on the Garcia Lorca play of the same name. Only it is a stripped-down version of that ballet (no scenery, no lighting effects, nothing but a barren studio with a mirrored wall at one end and several tall, rectangular windows that flood the room with a bleaching, purifying light), just as the ballet was itself a stripped-down version of the original play (no spoken text). Really, it would be more accurate to describe the film as a record of the ballet's dress rehearsal, supplemented with such preliminaries as dressing-room chitchat, make-up routines, warm-up exercises (punctuated with the choreographer's catchword: "Make the kidneys endure it!"), and a voice-over reminiscence and artistic testimonial by the choreographer/star, Antonio Gades. But this is not to suggest a kinship with concert films such as The Last Waltz and Gimme Shelter. Presumably director Carlos Saura did not have a hand in revising any of Gades-and-Company's dance steps, but evidently he had memorized their every move. And thus he was not in the position of the journalistic documentarist, scrambling around extemporaneously at some event that would go on quite nicely without him, and desperately hoping to situate himself once in a while in the right place at the right time. To the contrary, Saura knows precisely where he wants to be at every moment, and he has mapped out for his mobile, flexible, mellifluous camera a piece of choreography as sure, as seamless, as imaginative as Gades's ballet -- and also as separable and self-contained. (1981) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.