Set in the post-Communist, prewar period, Tango Argentino follows ten-year-old Nikola as he negotiates around his eccentric family. His father is a philandering music teacher, who plays weddings to supplement his income. His mother, who cooks and shops for elderly people, is too concerned with finding her own identity to look after Nikola and his ailing sister. As he begins to absorb his mother`s responsibilities, Nikola befriends the people he works for, in particular, the charming singer Sénor Julio Popovic. They begin to substitute for his family, giving him the attention his parents were not capable of. The film explores the difficulty of holding together a family in an unstable political climate, yet still upholds the necessity of family bonds. Like its title song, Tango Argentino intertwines the gentle with the harsh, the nostalgic with the ironic. Although it never explicitly deals with politics or the war, the film's concerns are clear. People should not be divided into the young and old, says Paskaljevic, but rather into the human and the inhuman. (From San Francisco Film Festival catalogue)
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