Text size:

'El Cantante'

Rating:

BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

August 3, 2007

Behind every great man, if we may get real for a moment, is a great publicist, business manager, financial adviser, attorney, tax accountant, general practitioner, hair stylist, dermatologist, image consultant and maybe, if he behaves himself, a great woman.

In the case of biopics, which are only intermittently about great women, that cadre of professionals is usually reduced to a lone figure looming in the background, a girlfriend, wife or confidante whose love and belief in his gifts remains unswerving amid the dissonant chorus of doubting Thomases.

If that woman happens to be played by Jennifer Lopez, she steps out of the shadows and knocks the great man into the next county. Marc Anthony, step aside.

"El Cantante," which purports to be a biography of the late Puerto Rican salsa singer Hector Lavoe, has inexplicably been fashioned as a two-hour lament for a long-suffering wife. This might not be a bad move, if the character had comparable talents of her own (e.g., Reese Witherspoon's June Carter) or otherwise deconstructed the mousey spouse cliches with the disarming brass and wit of Taraji P. Henson in "Talk to Me."

As co-written and directed by Leon Ichaso, Puchi Lavoe becomes a caricature of the wife as party pooper, a foul-mouthed harridan and closet narcissist who sucks the air out of every room she crashes into.

"El Cantante" is constructed as a series of chronologically-related incidents and concert sequences, periodically interrupted by a 2002 interview session with Lopez's Mrs. Lavoe. In these reality-TV style segments, filmed in sobering black-and-white, Mrs. Lavoe recollects her husband's career through a burnt-out but ever-defiant filter of me-me-me. Left without a song of her own, Lopez tears into each of these monologues like a capella arias.

These interludes serve as a kind of rest stop for the fatiguing saga of Lavoe (a grim-looking Anthony), who comes to New York to seek his fortune over the doomsaying objections of his father, still in mourning from losing another son to the wickedness of America. In short order, Lavoe meets the playful Puchi at a party and partners up with rising-star musician Willie Colon.

This is one noisy movie. Lavoe's rise and fall is charted with the usual whirl of trade headlines and salsa concert performances, amped up to a fortissimo blast that rarely fluctuates from an opening sequence (set in a career-peak year of 1985), when Mrs. Lavoe gaily stuffs cocaine up her husband's nose to pump him up for a public appearance.

There is really no place for the film to go from this raucously downbeat opener, but "El Cantante" goes there, anyway. Puchi's joie de vivre quickly sours as Hector messes up, with numbing repetition: Hector misses his wedding, Puchi storms the bachelor party, Hector tries dope (presumably because it's there), Puchi rants (but soon joins in), Hector accuses Puchi of cheating, Puchi pushes back. Hector hectors, Puchi hectors in kind.

The songs, delivered with brio by Anthony, are interpolated with heavy-handed relevance to the crisis at hand. The vibrant music ultimately takes a back seat to the cacophonous lady at the film's misplaced center.

EL CANTANTE (R). The rise and demise of salsa king Hector Lavoe (Marc Anthony, in solid voice), as witnessed by his mutually destructive wife. Jennifer Lopez is good as Mrs. Lavoe, but the abrasive characterization teeters on the edge of misogyny. Under Leon Ichaso's direction, the film's fortissimo approach becomes monotonous. 1:56 (language and drug use). At area theaters.