A couple of recent films
set in Havana portray the Cuban capital as essentially an uncredited character
in the story. Both Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s
1993 political tale ‘Strawberry and
Chocolate’ and Julian Schnabel’s 2000 portrait of the poet Reinaldo Arenas ‘Before Night Falls’ give us a city that is decaying before our eyes, a
corrupt old roué, for whom even at this advanced age, sex remains the fuel that
keeps things going. People living
in ‘La Habana’, especially the young, are desperate to escape the lecherous
embrace that seeks to corrupt everyone.
At the same time, anyone struggling to escape, faces a gravitational
pull that is stronger than any dying star.
Ironically, even in the
current film, Lucy Mulloy’s ambitious tale of love and despair ‘Una Noche’, the specific sexuality in
question, as in the earlier two films, is the same-sex kind. Ironic, because perhaps one of the most
macho cities on the planet seems to be undercut by deep threads of homo
eroticism, usually unfulfilled, but simmering close to the surface. In ‘Una
Noche’, the sexuality is both easy going and casual and at the same time,
the source of motives that drive the story forward.
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Brother and sister Elio (Javier Núñez
Florián) and Lila (Anailín de la Rúa) |
(The final irony about
gay Havana, of course, is that after decades of repression and reeducation of
‘Las Maricas’, one of the most visible and prominent LGBT activists in the
world has emerged there: Fidel’s
neice Mariela
Castro – President Raul’s daughter.)
Mulloy’s
film, which was produced with the blessing of Spike Lee, and appears to have
been made without a cent of ‘commercial’ investment, has made its way to
festivals and film competitions, so that as it begins its main-stream run, it
hits the scene with an impeccable pedigree, and a raft of awards.
Mulloy
claims the film is based on a true story.
She lived in Havana for a number of years getting to know people,
looking for non professional actors for her drama, and in general, figuring out
the allure, the sadness, the sexiness, and general despair that pervade the
city.
The
plot is simplicity itself: two
young men want to escape Havana (a pretty old story). The younger sister of one of the young men adores her
brother, and doesn’t want him to leave for the U.S. The sexual dynamics within the trio propel the story. The brother and sister, Elio and Lila,
have an easy going love for each other, a chaste loyalty that goes back to
their earliest childhood. Lila is
constantly teased for her long frizzy hair, the hair on her arms, and her
Frida-like eye brows. In fact, she
is a sultry, nubile beauty, unaware of her innate sexiness, more tom boy than
seductress. As Lila, Anailín de la Rúa de la Torre is flat out wonderful. She reminds us of a very young Anna Magnani, or Salma Hayek.
Into this
mix, drops Raul, a bonafide stud/hunk, who gets lots of screen time without his
shirt. Raul claims his chiseled brown
chest and arms are the result of not getting enough to eat. His sexuality is so strong, you can almost smell the pheromones coming off the screen.
Mulloy
set’s up Raul’s sexuality as the ‘problem’ of the film; ‘problem’ not in the
sense of failure, but rather the source of the dramatic tension that drives the
story forward.
The
‘problem’, as it were, is that older brother Elio (a moving performance by Javier Núñez Florián) is totally in thrall of Raul, and sets out to help
him escape from Havana, one assumes, more because of his love for the steamy
hunk, than any deep desire to escape.
He is torn, of course, between his love and loyalty to his beloved sister
Lila, whom he regrets leaving behind, and his lust for Raul, which seems
inescapable and doomed. Raul (a
heart-breaking performance by Daniel Arrechaga)
for his part is both a romantic protagonist and a cad. He assumes Elio’s attention and help
escaping Havana is borne of brotherly affection, and not a late adolescent
crush. For his part, Raul instantly
hits on the Taekwando-practicing Lila, who will have none of his nonsense. She apparently has no particular
problem with her brother’s sexuality, but rather dislikes Raul because he
appears to be taking advantage of her brother. Her dislike of Raul, however, is not so strident that she
won’t allow herself to be caught up the boys’ attempt to escape Cuba, for
Miami, 90 miles away.
There are other characters – the
young people’s families, co-workers and acquaintances, each displaying another
form of decay and corruption – are more or less incidental set pieces for the
story. Their contributions are
primarily to demonstrate the hellish nature of the life the youngsters want to
escape.
The great miracle of the film,
however, is Mulloy’s wonderful sense of observation. Her carefully chosen views of the intoxicating city, paint a
rich and moving picture of a metropolis rotting in on itself, falling apart at
the seams, and yet singing, drumming, dancing, having sex, seducing, and
getting on with life. In another
light, Havana would be a sweet paradise.
But life has become so shabby for most people, torn between desperate
survival and oblivion, that morals, ethics, civil behavior simply falls
away. It is the opposite of
innocent. Petty theft, disease, crumbling
buildings, barely functioning cars and broken lives are the back drop to Raul,
Lila and Eilio’s desperate efforts to escape. It is no wonder that the young trio sets out in the face of
enormous peril: compared to what
they are leaving behind, almost no danger would be too much.
Mulloy is clearly a film maker to be
watched. Even though the ‘Una
Noche’ runs out of dramatic juice toward the end, it’s a work of enormous
promise, and a display of keen observation that really gets under your skin. The real star is none of the sexy trio
at it’s heart, but rather the ravishing and ravaged city of Havana itself.
