It’s almost a crime that one of the best animated films of recent years, Chico & Rita, never had a theatrical run in Milwaukee or in most other cities. But anyone who cares about animation, Cuban music and a good love story can take heart. The film is out now in a deluxe set with a Blu-ray and a DVD plus a CD of the soundtrack.
Chico & Rita begins as a tired old shoe-shiner trudges home through the crumbling elegance of old Havana, past the hip-hop kids with their boom box and the Eisenhower-era American car whose owners are tinkering under the hood. He climbs the outdoor stairway to his room, pours himself some rum, lights a cigar and turns on the radio, flipping past the same speech on different channels until he finds a program of old Cuban music. His face gets a faraway look when the announcer identifies a song from 60 years ago by an act called Chico & Rita. You can be sure that instant: the tired old man is Chico; the song triggers memories of happier times.
2012 was an unusual year at the Oscars and not only for the top-prize sweep by The Artist, the first silent contender since 1929. In the animation category, Pixar Studio was entirely absent and one of the nominees was largely in Spanish with English subtitles. Although that film, Chico & Rita, didn't win, its presence was remarkable. Directed by Spain's Fernando Trueba (who won an Oscar 20 years ago for Belle Epoque) with illustrator Javier Mariscal, Chico & Rita is a 1950s-style picture book sprung to action. Most of the story consists of a long flashback, a chronicle of Chico's once great career and love affair with the radiant Rita, a sensuously curved torch singer with soft if scornful lips. When she first appears in a nightclub behind the microphone in a melting, form-fitting gown, the impression is as spellbinding as Rita Hayworth's entry in the 1940s classic Gilda.
Chico & Rita takes place mostly in colorful, rhythmic Havana and the darker, discordant New York of the '40s and '50s—a time when musicians and mobsters traveled regularly between the two cities. In those days Chico is a young pianist whose career is compounded from a set of happy accidents; Rita is defiantly uninterested in his attentions at first. Their long, off-and-on affair is jealous, combustible and passionate as they wind their separate but intersecting ways—Rita to Hollywood as singing Latina spitfire and Chico as sideman for Dizzy Gillespie.
With its sophisticated screenplay, Chico & Rita is a cartoon for adults and could rate NC-17 if real bodies were involved. The characters are shown full frontal and making love; the situations they face when dressed concern adult matters personal, professional and political. When Chico and his manager sidekick enter a basement jazz club in New York and one of them asks, “Hey, who's that guy in the hat?” aficionados will recognize him as Thelonious Monk at the piano. It's not a Shrek-level pop culture reference. Chico & Rita comes from a world whose inhabitants will understand the difficulty Chico had picking out the tune in Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto when thrust onto the Trocadero bandstand with Woody Herman's Orchestra.
Chico & Rita is a joyful celebration of life, music and love—an adult fairytale of tempestuous romance that looks better in animation than in any recent Hollywood effort at casting similar themes with live actors.
