This movie reminded me of the movie Sube y Baja with Cantinflas. I have always liked movies that have an ocean setting. It seems as if one can just put reality on hold and just live a little. Danzón is one of those movies that has that type of story. We see the everyday life of a woman, Julia, and how a visit to the beach can really make a person feel alive. This movie really emphasizes that even if you do not seek a vacation, it is really needed to fully value what you have or what you need have. The music, the dancing, and sense of community in the film gives the audience the setting that they are there in Veracruz. The choice of music is lovely, from Augustin Lara to Julio Jaramillo. They sing such romantic songs that adds beautifully to the movie. The instrumental beach music makes it so hard not to dance to. Overall, it is a movie that stepping out of your circle may not be so bad. You might meet nice people, see beautiful sights, and just enjoy who you really are. You even might set out on a path and end up on another to self understanding. One is never too young to have fun and it is never too late to set out on an adventure. This is a movie that makes me want to fall in love.I would recommend this movie to anyone who has a broken heart, or feels as if they are going nowhere in life. I would recommend this movie to anyone who feels suffocated in this point and time in their life. I believe that this movie would put a smile on anyone's face.Also, make sure to understand all of the names of the boats, they will make you laugh.

This film can hardly be classified as such. It lacks and visual style to distinguish it from other poorly made melodramas. It's characters are almost all stock, save for Julia, who is the only person the audience is supposed to connect with. However, due to a poor performance by the main actress and a horrifically abstract plot, we are unable to connect in any real way with this woman.Julia runs off to a city she does not know to find her dance partner, and she does not find him, but she does find a new sort of "family" consisting of a drag queen, a hooker, a no-nonsense hotel manager and a man young enough to be her son who she gets to "know" very well. This would be almost satisfying if the film did not first establish her OTHER family by giving the relationship Julia has with her daughter and her friends at home so much screen time. Maybe the "finding herself and her family" story line would have been effective if the viewer did not already feel that she had these things already. This choice makes the whole film obsolete, and instead of making Julia sympathetic, it makes her seem selfish and also very stupid.But then there is the ending. She returns home to her first family (after abandoning her found family, just like her dance partner had abandoned her--so had she really grown?)and returns to the dance hall, alone and ready to dance without a partner. This is the one act that showed some bravery (the actually brave kind, not the dumb "I'm running off to a strange city alone to spend all my savings looking for one man" kind). FOr a moment, the viewer is left satisfied thinking that the film is allowing its heroine to grow--but then who should appear but Carmelo, her dance partner. The frame is filled by their passion-less dance for what seems like hours, and the end credits begin to roll. This is a wholly unsatisfying ending for two reasons: 1)The film establishes Carmelo to be kind of a God figure, illusive and unobtainable, the perfect being that Julia is going to such ends to be with, and to show us him is just painful. 2)It negates the rest of the plot. Why did we waste so much time on this journey if she didn't really need to take it? Would Carmelo not have come back if she had not befriended a drag queen? The problems with this movie go beyond plot elements. It is very poorly shot. First time director Navaro (who also edited the film) lets the camera linger for far too long on mostly static objects. This halts the pacing of the film, and it occurs many, many times throughout. There is also an amazing amount of fluid camera movements, pans and tilts from one character to another, to a sign, to a building and then back to another camera. It is nauseating to see.The only thing that keeps me from giving this film a 1 is that it does show single women of a certain age living in Mexico, and it shows them in a positive light. It does not victimize them as single women so often are in Mexican cinema, but deals with them as people who work, who live and who are independent. But this is just not enough to support a film. As a feminist statement, it makes its point, as an entertaining or engaging film, it fails completely.

It´s a great movieI saw this movie 13 years ago in a premiere in the former cinema picasso, from then and now I see over and over again this movie.This movie talks the life of julia (maria rojo) his behavior in the job (operator phone) his daughter, and his principal passion the dance calls "DANZON".Every wednesday she goes to dance with a friend and she meets with his partner in dance carmelo, One day he don´t return to dance and then julia are looking for him (she thinks he has a problem with the mexican laws and he runs away to veracruz), she´s sad by the notice and she runs to veracruz for make a search for him.In this movie we looking in a frame the old mexican rairoad calls "EL MEXICANO" and all the city of veracruz.She meets new people, new friends (specially a man dressed like a woman)a hooker, the owner of the hotel and a younger man when she discover she´s still atractive by the men (the russian guy, carmelo, the young man).The movie take´s a trip in the life of julia before and after and finish when she leaves veracruz and meet again carmelo and they dance If you have the oportunitty to see the movie in tv or dvd or vhs SEE IT because it´s the few mexican movies made perfectlymy qualification 10/10

The main character goes on a long journey to find Carmelo, her danzon partner, after he fails to show up for their weekly dancing date. She believes that dancing is the only bright spot in her life. On her journey, she makes new friends and has an affair with a younger man. She returns to find Carmelo at home, and realizes that she doesn't need him the way she thought she did. Julia's life has an excitement even without this man.It was a good film. I watched a subtitled version which was helpful but as always you lose alittle of the content that way.