Chico & Rita (2010)

Jack and I loved this sexy animated musical in Spanish with subtitles, about a Cuban jazz piano player and his paramour, a luscious vocalist with green eyes. This isn't a cartoon for kids! The story is sweet, the characters volatile, and the artwork is outstanding. We particularly liked the busy street scenes, the carefully inked signs, and the old cars--most of it is set in the late 1940s and 1950s. You can see many examples on the official website, which has no spoilers, although there's one illustration of Rita topless. Co-director/co-writer/producer Fernando Trueba, whose Belle Epoque (1992--I didn't see it) won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1994, seems well-suited for animation, as he has a whopping case of strabismus (his eyes point outwards--here's his photo), and a common side effect of that condition is lack of depth perception. My mother had that and I knew which eye to look at, based on where she sat at the dinner table, but it can be disconcerting. I wanted to see Trueba's Latin jazz documentary Calle 54 (2000) but somehow didn't get around to it. He is joined on this project by co-directors (and brothers of each other) Tono Errando and Javier Mariscal (the latter's design website is worth a look, the former doesn't even make it onto the movie's site).

One of the benefits of animating a story such as this is that the protagonist can watch or sit in with deceased jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charlie "Bird" Parker, and Nat King Cole with no problem. Old recordings of Dizzy and Monk are used, a new one is created for Bird, and Freddy Cole subs for his brother Nat. But most of the music is written and performed by pianist Bebo Valdés, whose career was revived by Calle 54, as the fingers of Chico, and Idania Valdés (no relation) as the singing voice of Rita. Bebo is now 93, and then became the subject of the documentary Old Man Bebo (2008), which I haven't yet seen, but am enjoying its website. As a lover of jazz since the 1970s, I'm familiar with the sight of Dizzy's cheeks and neck puffing out when he blows his trumpet (here he is in 1985). This phenomenon is minimized, perhaps because it wasn't so pronounced in those days (here's a photo from 1947, and a still from the movie). It's not that important, but we both noticed.

I like to assign the release date chosen by imdb, which in this case is from the 2010 Telluride Film Festival. In fact, the movie was released in L.A. at the end of 2011, which qualified it for its Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature Film (it won that award at the Gaudí Awards in Barcelona, the Goya Awards in Madrid, the European Film Academy Awards in Berlin, and won Best Spanish Film at the Sant Jordi Awards in Barcelona; but Rango won the Oscar).

You won't be surprised that the soundtrack is outstanding. You can hear several entire tracks from it  on this link. I bought the whole thing before writing this. Imdb has a listing of 32 tracks, which don't perfectly match the 30 tracks on my purchased album, but may give you an idea of some of the bebop and Latin jazz that's on there.

Critics agree with us: rottentomatoes' critics scored 85% and audiences 78%. Sorry it's taken me a week to post this--I know it'll be in my city for a few more days, but if you have a decent sized screen and sound system you can enjoy it at home. The DVD has been released in the U.K. so ours shouldn't be too far behind. If you hate jazz/bebop, skip it, but otherwise you will have fun.