Chico & Rita: 'exuberant, passionate and melancholy'.

Graphic novel of the month
Film

Chico & Rita by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal – review

The book of the animated film about the lives of two Latin musicians leaves Rachel Cooke feeling exhilarated

Rachel Cooke

Sunda 5 June 2011

T

en years ago, the Spanish film director Fernando Trueba asked the artist Javier Mariscal to create a poster for his Latin jazz documentary, Calle 54. Though neither of them knew it at the time, this was to be the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership and, last year, the pair finally released Chico & Rita, an animated film. Chico & Rita tells the story of a gifted piano player and a beautiful singer and their adventures in 50s Havana, Las Vegas, Hollywood and New York – and it has a superb soundtrack by the Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés (it also features numbers by Thelonious Monk, Cole Porter, and Dizzy Gillespie). When it hit the festivals, it was widely acclaimed – our own Philip French called it "utterly delightful... affecting, funny... erotic" – and no wonder. Truly, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to love it.

This is the book of the film and, though it cannot quite match it – how could it, being silent? – it is nevertheless a work of art in its own right: exuberant, passionate, and melancholy. Like all the best graphic novels, it can read be in under an hour, and yet one puts it down feeling nothing less than exhilarated. Mariscal and Trueba are deft storytellers, and their scant 210 pages (never more than six frames per page) effortlessly take in two continents and several decades. If you haven't seen the film, the book will make you want to remedy this; but even if you have, it's an excellent pendant, especially if you plan ahead and stick the soundtrack on your iPod. Mariscal's drawings are not the most sophisticated I've ever seen between hard covers, but they have a zippy sense of movement, and a sultriness, that is all their own.

Our story begins in Havana in 1948. Chico, the finest pianist in the city – he can play anything, including Stravinsky – is looking for a singer when, one night, he meets a girl in a yellow dress called Rita. The two of them fall in love and, together, they win a talent contest, on the back of which Rita makes it as a star on Broadway and in Hollywood; Chico, meanwhile, ends up touring Europe with Dizzy Gillespie's band. But their relationship is seemingly doomed, the victim of their pride, and of Rita's sly, controlling manager. More sinisterly, they both fall foul of old-school American racism: Rita can sing in a swanky Las Vegas hotel, but she cannot, thanks to the colour of her skin, stay the night; Chico is set up during a drugs raid on the club he is playing and deported to post‑revolutionary Cuba. Will they ever see each another again? I'm not saying. But believe me when I tell you that finding out is nothing but a joy. For all that this book will have you tapping your toes, I defy anyone to reach the end of it without a tear in their eye.

THE GUARDIAN