Havana love songs

With Chico and Rita– a will-they-won't- they love story and a tribute to the Cuban jazz scene of the 1950s – adult audiences are finally getting the mature, distinguished animation they deserve. Director Fernando Trueba walks TARA BRADYthrough the lovingly painted streets of his first animated film

BETWEEN the traditional teatime shenanigans of The Simpsonsand the freaky satirical world of Adult Swim programming, the discerning punter is now accustomed to cartoons heralded by a restricted viewing code. Still, even the most ardent admirers of South Parkand The Venture Brotherswill admit that "adult viewing" isn't necessarily synonymous with grown up.

Animation has a long tradition of such angular master craftsmen as Len Lye and Jan Svankmajer, but their modern, discombobulating forms have seldom been considered for the theatrical circuit. Happily, as the generation reared on prime-time cartoons blossom into consumers, there’s a suave new kind of entertainment to meet their needs.

Like this summer's The Illusionist, Chicoand Ritasuggests that animation has reached a new, distinguished maturity. Inspired by the Cuban jazz scene of the 1950s, the film plays out a gorgeous, star-crossed romance to the swinging strains of Dizzy Gillespie, Cole Porter, Tito Puente and Charlie Parker.

Along with the hip soundtrack, there's a similarly impressive pedigree at work behind the camera. Chico and Ritamarks a creative and fecund partnership between the Oscar-winning director Fernando Trueba and the celebrated Valencian artist Javier Mariscal.

“The project was born because of my friendship with and admiration for Javier Mariscal,” says Trueba. “I wanted to make a movie with him. I wanted to get his lines, his colours, his art up there on a screen. I knew that it would be a good mix with jazz. Some people said to me ‘hey, this should be a live- action film’. I never thought of it that way. The characters, the dialogue, everything had already been written for Mariscal’s work.”

Mariscal, the designer behind the 1992 Olympic mascot, Camper bags, the Gran Hotel Domine Bilbao and various typefaces, has certainly put the hours in. Chico and Rita's will-they-won't-they two-step may be composed using fluid, sensual lines and shapes, but their backdrop takes in precise period depictions of pre-revolutionary Havana along with New York, Paris, Hollywood and Las Vegas.

“There was a lot of research for the art department,” says Trueba. “The streets and the buildings and the details – the clothes, the billboards, the people – all had to be checked. Havana was the most beautiful and the most difficult. The other cities are all well known and documented. We made a few trips to Cuba. We saw every photograph, every design and every piece of documentary footage. It was work but it was also a pleasure. The ’40s and the ’50s are beautiful to draw and to look at. It’s when design was born, after all.”

The results of Trueba and Mariscal's labours could double as a "superhero origins" prequel to Buena Vista Social Club. Significant players and incidents from the Cuban jazz world are woven into the fabric of a story that depicts the barroom death of Chano Pozo, Thelonious Monk hammering out Blue Monkin a New York club and Nat King Cole singing at Radio City Music Hall.

“This is a big moment in jazz,” says the director. “I wrote with the music in mind – 1948 and 1949 brought that first real fusion of Latin music and American jazz. Dizzy Gillespie always said that everything changed when he played with Chano Pozo.

“We had started with the places, but as a story and a history, everything fell together for us. We realised we could use Chano Pozo and others as characters. Animation is a beautiful kind of freedom. You can really paint every shot.”

This is the first time that Trueba – the film-maker behind Mark Kermode favourite The Mad Monkeyand the Academy Award winning Belle Epoque– has produced an animation, though it's hardly his first foray into the music world. Back in 2000, Trueba's greatly admired documentary Calle 54assembled the greats of Latin jazz – Tito Puente, band leader Chico O'Farrill, Cuban father-and-son pianists Bebo and Chucho Valdés, pianist Michel Camilo, saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera and vocalist Gato Barbieri – for one last jam at the Sony Music Studios on 54th Street in New York. (Tito Puente died 10 weeks after the shoot.)

"Because I made Calle 54I met Bebo," says Trueba. "I would never have made a movie like this if I hadn't gotten to know Bebo Valdés. He's 92 years old now, and he was the inspiration for Chico. Chico even looks like Bebo. It's not at all like Bebo's life, but it's his face, his spirit and his musicianship. Chico is Bebo and also a tribute to all the Cuban musicians of that era. You can find things from Bebo, you can find things from Ruben Gonzalez, or this generation of guys, some of them stayed in Cuba, some of them left. Chico is both of these things: he goes to America, but then in the end he has to go back to Cuba."

Valdés, the influential band leader and pianist, was living in comparative obscurity in Stockholm when Trueba tracked him down for Calle 54. The pair have since won Grammys.

"For me, Calle 54was a personal tribute to the music that I love," says Truebo. "I never thought at the time I was making a movie that anyone was waiting to see. Then the movie became really influential, in a way. It was a surprise for something so personal and heartfelt."

Since its initial release a decade ago, Calle 54has spawned a record label and a club. "Two weeks ago I was touring Mexico and Venezuela and many young jazz players came up to me to say how important the movie was for them," says Trueba. "Phil Woods, the saxophonist, who is my idol, once told me that he had watched Calle 54more times than any other DVD. I was so moved. It was better than awards or box-office or good reviews. It was music to my ears."

With so many friends in jazzy places, Trueba had no difficulty securing the rights for Chico and Rita's sleek soundtrack. In addition to seminal period tracks chronicling the evolution of jazz, Bebo Valdés provides a score with the assistance of Flamenco singer Estrella Morente, a chanteuse best known outside the Spanish-speaking world as the singing voice of Penélope Cruz in Pedro Almodóvar's Volver.

“I have a lot of great friends in jazz,” says Trueba. “Especially Bebo. They know I’m a fan. But I have become close to many of them over the years. It is a beautiful thing to be able to call on them for this movie.”

Chico and Ritahas already taken the festival circuit by storm, finding admirers at such major shindigs as the Toronto International Film Festival and Telluride.

“I think Telluride is a beautiful festival,” says Trueba. “It is the artists’ festival, where you find a lot of writers and actors and directors. So I looked out into the audience at the premiere and I could see Werner Herzog, Claudia Cardinale, Alexander Payne and Bertrand Tavenier. It was the most incredible room I’ve ever seen. Music is good to you that way, I think.”

Chico and Ritais on limited release