'Chico & Rita': an animated abundance of Cuban jazz charms

You can see (and hear) why Chico is so in love with Rita, and why everyone is so in love with 1948 Cuba in the animated love story that bears their names: She's a sexy, dreamily beautiful singer with a seductive, smoky voice to match. And they inhabit a musically magical time and place -- before You-Know-Who took it over.

"Chico & Rita," one of this year's five Oscar nominees for best animated feature film, is a serious backstage-musical romance in bolero form -- a ballad full of problematic passions. The basic elements are familiar: Chico is a gifted young piano player with big aspirations. Rita's sultry style hooks him and Havana from the start. The gringo Mob really runs things there, but who cares? What can interfere with their love?

Jealousy and ego, that's what. Her career starts to take off. She can handle it, but Chico can't. A Mafioso sugar daddy whisks her away to New York City, where she finds even greater fame and fortune without Chico. He soon follows, linking up and finding his own niche with the great jazz-fusion artists of the day, but the lovers' attempted reunions there -- and in Hollywood and Las Vegas -- bear bitter fruit. Shades of "A Star Is Born" haunt the resulting melodrama. For two such antsy artistes, it's easy to synchronize music, hard to synchronize love.

Or, as Mother would say: Watch out -- there's going to be tears.

But there's going to be a ton of terrific music, too, since this is a kind of film-a-clef about Cuban musicians. The lustrous, jazzy original soundtrack by Cuban bandleader-composer Bebo Valdés is complemented by the music (and animated appearances) of Chano Pozo, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Freddy Cole (Nat's brother), among others, in a delicious variety of big-band tunes, croony ballads, mambas---even a "funeral rumba"!

The film's fine fusion of Latin legends and rhythms is reminiscent of Ry Cooder's great "Buena Vista Social Club" and its rediscovery of Ibrahim Ferrer. Here, the discovery is Idania Valdés, who dubs Rita's breathy, sensuous singing voice -- "the kind of voice one listens to with his eyes closed." Its mesmerizing warmth animates not only Rita but all the other Afro-Cuban characters in the story.

The hyper-realistic animation is tasteful and atmospheric rather than spectacular, frequently "cinematic" with its high-angle, tracking, zoom and dolly shots---colorful in Havana, muted in New York. Spanish director Fernando Trueba (Oscar winner for "Belle Epoque") and designer Javier Mariscal did extensive research in Cuba in order to render every 1940s street, car and beach with historical accuracy. The backgrounds are flawless.

So is the sad sax that always seems to be playing in background, matching sad sacks like Chico -- arrested and deported from the U.S. just in time for Castro's revolution. Rita has her issues, too, including a meltdown on stage and a weakness for the bottle. Fate drags both of them inexorably back to the ugly future.

But there's some redemptive hope and joy to leaven the sadness of the story, and more than a few good lines. Says Chico after following Rita to her gritty barrio home: "I'd kiss the ground you walk on, if you lived in a cleaner neighborhood."

"Chico & Rita" sweetly evokes and pays homage to a bygone era every bit as well as "The Artist," in its way. It deserves credit for being that rare, welcome thing -- an animated feature for adults, complete with nudity! (Ever so tasteful, to be sure.) It lost the Oscar to Gore Verbinski's much flashier, edgier "Rango" -- thank God, at least not to "Kung Fu Panda 2."

I was rooting for "Puss in Boots," myself.

(In Spanish with English subtitles.)