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Dancing At The Blue Iguana

2001, Movie, R, 123 mins

Dancing At The Blue Iguana: Review

DANCING AT THE BLUE IGUANA
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Developed through workshop improvisations with the cast, this portrait of strippers who work at the Blue Iguana (a real place — not a strip club — whose name tickled director Michael Radford's imagination) contains striking moments, but never coheres. The women of the Blue Iguana are a mixed bunch, neither the perpetually horny hotties of porn fantasies nor the degraded dupes whose fates anti-pornography demagogues bemoan. Flaky blond Angel (Daryl Hannah) is as good-hearted as she is stupid; her one desire is to adopt a child, but she has no idea how to present herself to straight-laced types like social workers. Unbeknowst to Angel, she's caught the eye of a courtly hit man (Russian actor Vladimir Mashkov) bunked in the hotel that backs onto the Blue Iguana. Sharp-tongued Jasmine (Sandra Oh) wants to write, and spends her spare time in coffee shops and poetry workshops. But when she meets a man who appreciates her mind as well as her body, she doesn't know how to proceed. Stormy (Sheila Kelly) is haunted by her relationship with soon-to-be-married brother Sully (Elias Koteas), while wild-woman Jo (Jennifer Tilly) finds herself pregnant and uncertain what to do about it. Fresh-faced Jessie (former Miss Teen USA Charlotte Ayanna who, as Charlotte Lopez, wrote the book Lost in the System about her experiences in foster care) is the new girl in town, while visiting porn-star Nico (Kristin Bauer) isn't as pulled together as her seamless exterior suggests. Unless the notion that strippers are people too has never occurred to you, this movie offers little in the way of startling insights. But each actress works her ass off (excuse the obvious metaphor) to keep her character from degenerating into an obvious stereotype, and they succeed more often than they fail. Hannah's Angel is surprisingly likable, dumb blondisms aside, and Oh is spectacularly good as lit-wit Jasmine: Bliss is seeing her narrow her eyes and chortle "I'm from Seattle" in response to a question about feng shui. Kelly brings a sense of bitterly controlled despair to the self-hating Stormy and Tilly is, as always, a corker. Her encounter with a beaming expectant mother at the prenatal clinic where Jo has gone for an abortion is priceless, starting with a squabble over Jo's smoking and culminating in her high decibel outburst, "I'm going to have this baby and my baby is going to sell drugs to your baby on the playground!" leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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