Spoiler Alert: Keeping Movies Under Wraps
The only moment in the film that comes to life through the synergistic passion of image and performance is a musical sequence starring Penélope Cruz as the mistress of ceremonies and the star—an imperious, wily, witty, and utterly free singer, dancer, personality, and comedian—in a cavernous, barnlike theatre where Civil War troops are entertained. Her performance steals the film. I’d gladly trade all the artificial realism of “The Invite” for her few glorious minutes of flamboyant artifice here. There’s an altogether different film yearning to burst out of that scene, one that’s not at all by the book. In general, the contemporary episode is more engaging than the historical ones, for the simple reason that Alberto inhabits the same world that Los Javis do, and they perceive and realize it most vividly. Still, there’s sadly little about Alberto’s theatrical beginnings; his historical research, involving a quest for recordings from the nineteen-twenties of Greek popular songs with queer or gender-ambiguous lyrics, is fascinating but remains undeveloped. The textual literalism that dominates the action is shown up …
