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'El Cantante', the Birth of Salsa at the HBO International Latino Film Festival

By Margarita Kurtz

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

The New York International Latino Film Week just passed. The week that celebrated Latino stories and fillmakin came to a close with the most awaited film of the year ‘El Cantante’.

Director Leon Ichaso (‘Crossover Dreams’, ‘Pinero’) recreates the story of Héctor Lavoe, the famed salsa singer from Puerto Rico, who comes to New York to seek his fame and fortune. His story opens with a flashback from an interview shot in black and white of his wife, Puchi, played by Jennifer Lopez, who serves as producer in the film. It’s 2002, some years after Hector’s death from AIDS.

This film is clearly a labor of love for the two stars, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez. To their credit, they both really throw themselves wholeheartedly into their performances to bring the complicated love story of Héctor and Puchi onto the big screen. The scenes showing Puchi meeting Héctor for the first time at her birthday party, their married life together it’s a vivid portrayal of the joy, passion, and anger between them; which make the audience root for their success.

The concert scenes of Marc Anthony as Héctor Lavoe are dazzling. His rendition of Lavoe’s salsa classics are infectious, and even the creative English subtitles which floats down the screen gives Anglo audiences a chance to appreciate the beauty and range of the music.

Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón, bandleader and trombonist, were among the first artists to record on Fania, the record label and sound that would be the Latin equivalent of Motown. It is the music that truly holds this film together and is the heart and soul of the picture.

Unfortunately, Lavoe’s addiction to heroin and cocaine soon become the center of his off-stage life, and his inability to fight or cure himself is lamentable. The movie becomes a downer and has nowhere to go. Puchi and Héctor’s fights continue to get worse and the string of loss and sickness bring out even more sadness.

The New York of the time –both the glitz and seediness – is captured quite effectively in ‘El Cantante’. However, the film could have done a better job of exploring just what haunted Héctor’s drug-addled soul. Was it his father’s disappointment that Héctor left his homeland at 17 to move to New York, and didn’t follow in his footsteps? Or was it his mother’s early death? These reasons are only hinted at and never fully explored to satisfaction. Even Puchi’s efforts to figure out his pain are unsuccessful. The quick replie is, “You know I don’t like to talk about that stuff.”

Puchi, as she wryly comments towards the end, is the “only one left” who can talk about Héctor and how important his musical legacy was. For lovers of salsa and the Puerto Rican identity, this is a significant film. Here’s hoping that audiences will overlook the weaker parts of the film’s narrative and come to appreciate Lavoe’s musical legacy.