CLEMENTINE TANGO

A long-standing fascination with cabaret entertainment led Caroline Roboh to begin filming CLEMENTINE TANGO, aided by a French state-funded grant. A former exotic dancer in London, Roboh learned the fundamentals of filmmaking while helping students at the London Film School, though she was not enrolled herself. She directed one short film and wrote scripts before her feature film debut with CLEMENTINE TANGO, at the age of 23. The wildly unconventional film played to Parisian audiences for 18 months. Charles (Francois Helvey), a snobbish aristocrat, traces down his father's past “amour,” an English-speaking woman who is now an aging chanteuse in a Pigalle caberet catering to a bisexual crowd. Her adolescent daughter is the tango-loving Clementine (Claire Pascal) to whom Charles finds himself attracted, though she may be his half-sister. The sexually liberating atmosphere of the cabaret frightens the repressed Charles who discovers his own sensuality for the first time, albeit a confused one. Helping the confusion are Josephine Larsen as the androgynous M.C.; her male counterpart, Arturo Brachetti; 3 glittering male dancers who look like escapees from “La Cage Aux Folles” and many other real-life cabaret entertainers who contribute to the outrageous elements that should make the film a cult classic: kitsch, decadence, incest and transvestism! “The final effect is that of a wild party, small in dimensions but enjoyed by everybody present. . .amusing. . .grotesque caricature.” -Variety