Official Movie Website Theatrical Release 06/22/07 (LA & NY) Home Video 10/30/07 MPAA Rating Rated R for language and drug use Running Time 1 hour 56 minutes Genre Drama Director Leon Ichaso Writer Todd Antony Bello, David Darmsteder, Leon Ichaso Cast Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Federico Castelluccio, Romi Dias, Vincent Laresca Studio Picturehouse |
EL CANTANTE
SYNOPSIS
EL CANTANTE celebrates the life and music of the
legendary Puerto Rican salsa singer Hector Lavoe,
a pioneer of the sound and sensibility that
redefined Latin music in the 1960s and 1970s.
Directed by Leon Ichaso, the film is a labor of love
for its stars, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez,
who are both New Yorkers of Puerto Rican
descent. Shepherded to the screen and produced
by Lopez, EL CANTANTE portrays an era when a
new sense of national identity and pride took root
in Puerto Rican communities across the U.S.
Hector Lavoe’s music was both a soundtrack to
and affirmation of that awakening, and that music
courses joyfully through EL CANTANTE. Spanning
the 1960s to the 1980s, EL CANTANTE charts
Hector Lavoe’s rapid rise to success and fame as
an artist whose music combined Puerto Rican
tradition with streetwise modernity and unabashed
emotion with straightforward realism. It reveals
the singer not only as an architect of Salsa but as
its soul; the kind of artist, like Billie Holliday, Edith
Piaf or La Lupe, who forges an uncanny emotional
bond with his audience. Love, pain, joy, pride,
sorrow, endurance: Lavoe’s singing contained the
raw stuff of life as ordinary people -- and he
himself -- knew it. As Lavoe, Anthony mines the
contradictory essence of a gifted man who could
EL CANTANTE celebrates the life and music of the
legendary Puerto Rican salsa singer Hector Lavoe,
a pioneer of the sound and sensibility that
redefined Latin music in the 1960s and 1970s.
Directed by Leon Ichaso, the film is a labor of love
for its stars, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez,
who are both New Yorkers of Puerto Rican
descent. Shepherded to the screen and produced
by Lopez, EL CANTANTE portrays an era when a
new sense of national identity and pride took root
in Puerto Rican communities across the U.S.
Hector Lavoe’s music was both a soundtrack to
and affirmation of that awakening, and that music
courses joyfully through EL CANTANTE. Spanning
the 1960s to the 1980s, EL CANTANTE charts
Hector Lavoe’s rapid rise to success and fame as
an artist whose music combined Puerto Rican
tradition with streetwise modernity and unabashed
emotion with straightforward realism. It reveals
the singer not only as an architect of Salsa but as
its soul; the kind of artist, like Billie Holliday, Edith
Piaf or La Lupe, who forges an uncanny emotional
bond with his audience. Love, pain, joy, pride,
sorrow, endurance: Lavoe’s singing contained the
raw stuff of life as ordinary people -- and he
himself -- knew it. As Lavoe, Anthony mines the
contradictory essence of a gifted man who could
© 2003 St. Louis Movie Review Weekly. All rights reserved, except where indicated.
All movie titles, pictures, etc...are the property of their respective studios.
All movie titles, pictures, etc...are the property of their respective studios.
| ST. LOUIS MOVIE REVIEW WEEKLY |
express anything with his music, but channeled his inner turmoil into a host of self-destructive
behaviors. Anthony’s intensity and honesty is matched by that of Lopez, who portrays Lavoe’s wife,
Puchi. In their first onscreen pairing, the real-life couple capture the complex dynamics of a relationship
between two bright, funny and flawed human beings who loved, battled and forgave one another for
twenty years, until Lavoe’s death in 1993.
behaviors. Anthony’s intensity and honesty is matched by that of Lopez, who portrays Lavoe’s wife,
Puchi. In their first onscreen pairing, the real-life couple capture the complex dynamics of a relationship
between two bright, funny and flawed human beings who loved, battled and forgave one another for
twenty years, until Lavoe’s death in 1993.