Carlos Saura has made some of the most striking musicals in the recent history of Spanish cinema. Through the flamenco-ised music of Bizet's opera, Carmen offered vintage Saura: gender, the relations between the sexes, the rival claims of love and art, the blurred contours of fantasy and reality, the sabotage of chronology. These are all there in Tango. Carmen's Laura Del Sol in Tango is Mia Maestro. Tango was the brainchild of the Argentinian producer Juan Carlos Codazzi. As a co-production made largely for commercial reasons to exploit markets in Spain and Argentina, Tango inevitably also has a bifocal thematic focus. While some Spanish/Latin American coproductions, as Isabel Santaolalla and others have argued, are motivated by various agendas, such as a desire to counteract the processes of cultural stereotype, Tango provides an opportunity for mutual exploration of compatible histories.