Chico and Rita

A heartfelt homage to a time and place, Chico and Rita is the current darling of arthouse animation. It had at its heart an interesting love story, and the music lends it an exciting beat, but I can’t help but think its appeal is limited.

In glamorous pre-revolution Cuba, Chico is a gifted pianist in the bebop scene. He sees Rita singing at a club and falls in love. Cold at first, she soon reciprocates, but Chico already has a girl, leading to fiery Latino clashes. A collaboration, however, wins a local contest, and soon Rita is whisked to New York. Misunderstandings tear the two apart, even after Chico finds his way to the Big Apple, and deportation at a time of revolution could be dangerous, but perhaps the music will win through in the end and Chico will find his way back to the States.

The main problem I have with Chico and Rita is that I did not like either of the lovers. Chico is a two-timer and a bad drunk, while Rita is willing to sleep her way to success. If they had been drawn ugly, the film would have been disastrous. If anything came over from the world of jazz, it was the current connotations of smugness and arrogance.

In animation terms, it was extremely variable. The use of CG for much of the background art made for some of the most beautiful parts of the film, and also the most terrible. In one moment, the imagined camera would beautifully pan up as though on a crane – and then a motorcar would move across the screen totally static, like a cut-out. A basement jazz scene with Charlie Parker, Chano Pozo and Thelonious Monk (‘That guy in the hat’!) was a beautiful and loving evocation of a musical scene, but then you get horrible animation duds like the background of revolutionary Cuba where everyone is totally still with arms waggling like sticks, or faces appear completely flat against the window of aeroplanes. CG models ended up looking like cel-shaded computer game graphics, too.

There is much of the romance of fiery heady music here, and a world where music takes centre-stage in a culture is indeed to be looked back on wistfully. But the promiscuity gets in the way of the love story, and the naïve use of heavy political issues that had hitherto barely been mentioned just for plot contrivances rankled. Fun, but no classic.