Sensualidad

Hell hath no fury like a rumbera (rumba dancer) thrown into jail for two years for petty theft. Prostitute Aurora (Cuban-born dance queen Ninón Sevilla, “the Golden Venus of the Golden Age”) gets out of prison and exacts her vengeance by seducing the very married and respectable judge who put her behind bars (Fernando Soler). Borrowing liberally from the 1930 Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich classic The Blue Angel, Sensualidad shows how Eros makes a mockery of rectitude and righteousness.

A brazen star vehicle for Ninón Sevilla, who also did her own choreography, the movie has been called “a deliriously kitsch-smitten melodrama of sexual subjugation and perverse pleasures.” (Lincoln Centre).

We appreciate the support of Claro Video // DCP Courtesy of Filmoteca UNAM

From her inflamed look to her fiery mouth, everything is heightened in Ninón (her forehead, her lashes, her nose, her upper lip, her throat, her voice).

Francois Truffaut, Cahiers du cinema

The essence of Sevilla’s films is found in her dancing. As a performer, she leads with her upthrust chin and plays directly to the camera. Said to have been classically trained, she modified the conga and merengue to suit her own kinetic, hand-fluttering, eye-rolling, back-bending, fanny-wagging, self-caressing, sublimely narcissistic technique—a hopping, elbows-out, hip-shake shimmy somewhere between the traditional West African Sinte and the Pony dance popularized post-Twist by Chubby Checker. All her numbers are showstoppers…

J Hoberman, Artforum

Alberto Gout’s Sensualidad capitalizes on Ninón Sevilla’s explosive screen presence and performance as perhaps Mexican noir’s most evil femme fatale, to deliver an unforgettable noir-melodrama-musical that fires on all cylinders […] The nightclub musical numbers are predictably outlandish… It’s all gloriously insane.

Heart of Noir