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The
Stark Beauty of 'Havana Suite'
Dalia
Acosta
HAVANA, (IPS) - Day-to-day life in the
Cuban capital is a doctor who changes
into a clown costume when his hospital
shift is over, a railwayman who plays
saxophone at a church, a mother who
every night readies her transvestite
son's costume, and an old woman whose
only income comes from selling
peanuts.
All are real-life characters. As are
Francisquito, a boy with Down
syndrome, a dancer trying to get his
house back, and the shoemaker who by
night dons a suit and is known at the
local dancehall as El Elegante.
There is no wealth, no luxuries, no
privileges in these and other lives
that Cuban director Fernando Pérez
followed throughout a single day and
captured in his latest film, ”Havana
Suite”, which recently premiered on
the socialist-run island's big
screens.
”I opted for common people, who work
and have lives that are so simple that
we end up not even seeing them,”
said Pérez, director of such Cuban
film classics as ”Clandestinos”,
”Hello Hemingway”,
”Madagascar” and ”La vida es
silbar” (Life Is to Whistle).
These characters, who Pérez says
”live their lives as if staging of a
fiction,” pass through the film
without speaking. Instead of the word,
there is the camerawork of Raúl Pérez
Ureta and the soundtrack by Edesio
Alejandro.
”This film is about the value of
small things, people who don't need a
bottle of expensive wine to be happy
-- happy despite being poor -- and
about people who dream amid hard times
and are able to overcome,” he said.
”Love me dearly, sweet love of mine,
the lover I will always adore,”
croons Cuban diva Omara Portuondo
(best known for her work with the
Buena Vista Social Club), as the
camera lens scans the dilapidated
buildings of Havana and a rough,
aggressive ocean that is nevertheless
beautiful.
With this film, the director has
broken the unwritten law in Cuban
movies and television that attempt to
depict the island's reality with a
wide array of perspectives. If there
is a poor person, for example, there
should always be portrayed someone in
better living conditions.
Contrary to the rumours of possible
censorship of this feature-length film
due to the Cuba it reveals, the film
officials of the Fidel Castro
government decided to extend its stay
in local theatres by two weeks. And
the state-run media have given
”Havana Suite” (”Suite Habana”
in Spanish) ample coverage.
In the words of journalist Rolando Pérez
Betancourt, ”Fernando Pérez has
just put out one of the most important
films in Cuban cinematic history,”
due to its sensitivity and ”the
formal values he is able to meld using
a strategy marked by artistic
risks.”
It is a film that ”can be taken in,
suffered and enjoyed by the most
diverse audience and even by those who
would appear less disposed to accept
something so different from what they
are used to.”
In the opinion of film critic Mercedes
Santos Moray, Pérez's latest
documentary places him at the same
level as Titón (Tomás Gutiérrez
Alea) considered the master of Cuban
film, with his ”Memorias del
subdesarrollo” (Memories of
Underdevelopment) and ”Fresa y
Chocolate” (Strawberry and
Chocolate).
Pérez has turned into ”the
legitimate replacement for the late
master of film, because he has
identified a 'transgressive' ethic and
an aesthetic, critical and deeply
wrenching, cast in love for Cuba,”
she wrote.
Noted local 'trovador' singer Jorge
García, who IPS caught up with
outside the Cinemateca de Cuba,
confessed he had seen ”Havana
Suite” twice already.
”And I'd go see it again. It's very
powerful, but at the same time it
doesn't leave you with that bitter
feeling,” he said.
”It is a film that states many
truths, and what is important is not
only what the film says, but the way
it says it,” added the singer.
Among all the positive reviews,
however, one foreign journalist who
has been working in Cuba for the past
decade considered the film ”the work
of a beginner, which relies on methods
that are already heavily utilised in
Cuban cinema.”
When asked how much of the film is
reality and how much is fiction, the
director told the Cuban newspaper
Juventud Rebelde that ”nothing was
altered” during the shooting nor
during the editing. The people
appearing in the film ”are living
their lives.”
So the scene is real in which Jorge
Luis Roque is at the airport, says
good-bye to his family, climbs the
stairs to the airport that will take
him to exile in the United States, and
takes one last, sad look around.
”We told him, 'we're going to set up
the camera and whatever happens will
happen. We won't interfere in
anything.' And there's the scene,”
said Pérez.
Everything begins at dawn and ends at
night in dreams. Iván Carbonell, the
transvestite, dreams about performing
on the big stage, the doctor Juan
Carlos Roque want to be an actor,
while the elderly peanut-seller Amanda
Sautier says she no longer has dreams.
However, once the filming was done,
Sautier was able to buy a refrigerator
that she would never have been able to
afford with her meagre income. And the
doctor finally decided to abandon his
profession and dedicate himself full
time to working as a clown.
But one who did not achieve his dream
was the grandfather of Francisquito,
who wanted ”health in order to live
longer.” He died before the film's
debut. When Francisquito saw his
grandfather's image on the screen at
the movie theatre, he shouted,
”That's my grandpa! Look at my
grandpa!”
”If there's something I confirmed --
more than learned -- it's that our
reality cannot be forced into a
mould,” said Pérez. He defines his
film as ”an intimate moment in the
Cuba of today.”
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