Juan Malizia and Ayelén Álvarez Miño in Our Last Tango (Strand Releasing)

“I’d do everything the same again. Except for being with Juan.” So says superstar tango dancer María Nieves at the beginning of this documentary, which details her seven-decade tango career and the stormy relationship at its center. Nieves is full of such certainties as she discusses her past, but by the end it’s clear the dancer doth protest too much. She balances an impulse for self-reflection with a fierce strain of denial, and it’s as compelling an act as any she ever did on stage.

Nieves grew up in poverty in Argentina. As a young teenager, she began frequenting milongas, clubs that featured the tango. Dancing “was the joy of the poor,” she says; it was also an excuse for her to talk to boys. Juan Carlos Copes was one such young man. Her ensuing artistic and romantic partnership with him would dominate her life and change the world of dance.

Copes is interviewed as well, but he gives off an uneasy ambivalence. He seems as unsure of what to make of this film as the filmmakers are of him. “I’d found my Stradivarius,” he says, describing what it was like meeting Nieves. More objectification follows throughout. “I didn’t belong to her,” says Copes, “she belonged to me.” He brushes off the fact that they were married; since it was held in Las Vegas, he says, it wasn’t valid in other countries. As for his affairs, he simply had “weaknesses” quite “natural” for a man.

For long stretches, Copes and Nieves wouldn’t see each other except every night on the dance floor, in front of adoring fans, where he might even whisper insults in her ear as they flew across the stage. Nieves believes the bile inside her ultimately made her a greater artist. At times, she and Copes bring to mind another superstar couple of the international cultural sphere, performance artists Marina Abramovic and Ulay. Both duos channeled a love/hate dynamic into their work that made it richer.

The major difference between them is how the couples split. Abramovic, after learning secondhand that Ulay had fathered a child with another woman, had a dramatic breakup with him while at the Great Wall of China. Nieves, after learning secondhand that Copes had fathered a child with another woman, was unceremoniously, and privately, dumped. It may be a lack of catharsis that drew her to the conceit of this film, which brilliantly and beautifully re-creates scenes and dances from different stages of her life.

Director German Kral marvelously layers the reenactments and the rehearsal process for them: a dance that features aerial work (to capture the feeling of first love) stands out, as does a moment where two actors watch footage of themselves, as Copes and Nieves, performing a Singin’ in the Rain fantasy sequence. Kral also pushes his subject. He lets Nieves rack up empty claims like “I was never jealous,” but won’t let her escape the pain she has had over never having children. Her eventual anger is riveting: “I don’t want to talk anymore,” she says, then demands, “Who the hell is Copes?”

Ulay and Abramovic had a touching reunion during her glitzy MoMA show, The Artist is Present, in 2010. Video of it even went viral, not a common occurance for performance art. They subsequently became engaged in a less touching lawsuit. By contrast, Nieves and Copes seem likely to never have any such coda. Our Last Tango is memorable not only as a tribute to two worthy artists but also as a depiction of what happens when the music goes silent.