8/10
Jewel of the Cuban cinematography
26 April 2011
This film does not only show the beauty of Cuban landscape and how good and funny the people are there. Tabío, the director of the film, did a good job, he presented the labyrinths the people must go through to survive in Cuba. The plot, a millionaire inheritance from Spain, was conceived brilliantly and from here you will notice hypocrisy and false values of some persons involved and kindness or conformism of others. This comedy in a very comic way is about the difficulties of the people to live, how they fight for getting a single dollar, the existing promiscuity in the society and in houses much needed of maintenance, roofs of some of them falling down, and those persons living in may be harmed or seriously wounded when this happens. In an invented village called Yaragüey, Bernardito, the hero of the film, works in an office and in the evening together with his wife leases video-films for making more money, something that they do secretly since it is legally forbidden. The criticism of the Cuban economical situation is implicit in the film but shown in a very relaxed way, for not to say in the Cuba way. Funny to see the behavior of a bourgeois old woman and that of a communist old man, the latter was very radical and always blaming the embargo of all problems they suffer. Since not many people are able to understand the Cuban way of speaking Spanish and some other local details it is advisable to see the film with subtitles.
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