STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE
(FRESA Y CHOCOLATE)
A film review by Leo Bueno
Copyright 1995 Leo Bueno
I am starting to write this review before going to see STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE, Cuba's Oscar nominee for best foreign film, directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea (who also directed the sometimes and in some circles critically acclaimed MEMORIAS DEL SUBDESARROLLO--"Memories of Underdevelopment". I saw MEMORIAS as part of a Cuban cinema class back in the late '70s; it merged the politics of the Cuban Revolution with mundane elements of the human condition. I knew then that MEMORIAS was probably a state-sanctioned political missive, and now expect STRAWBERRY will follow suit.
Fellow Internetters, primarily in the newsgroup dedicated to Cuba (soc.culture.cuba), have mentioned that STRAWBERRY is a harsh criticism of the Revolution and its current state of affairs. I have jumped to the conclusion that STRAWBERRY is nothing more than a veiled attempt at espousing the party line--it probably looks like political criticism, but it ain't so.
Having some first hand and extensive anecdotal knowledge of Castro's repressiveness, I can't conceive of his tolerating honest and adversarial criticism of the Revolution, and I can't imagine his letting anyone even suggest his failure as a leader of a failed movement. As kids say these days, duh!, the Revolution's current state needs no criticism; its physical and spiritual crumbling is self evident.
The proper questions to put relate to Castro's legitimacy. I bet the film takes Castro's power for granted, and that this or any other movie, produced under Cuba's state control, cannot question his right to run Cuba's political show (ongoing now for more than 36 years). That's why I just can't believe STRAWBERRY is an honest criticism of the regime. Let's see what happens after the room goes dark and the screen lights up.
I saw the film--twice. I was right; Castro remained intact.
STRAWBERRY negotiates the relationship between a young "dialectic materialist," as he describes himself, and a homosexual photographer (Diego) in 1979 Cuba. The young man (David) is the son of peasants; a symbol of the Revolution's reason for being. Grateful to the Revolution for the opportunity to receive a university education, he studies Political Science instead of Literature, his avocation, because he perceives it is his duty. Therein lies a likely unintended irony, since Cuba has no need for political theoreticians. Cuba's government is Castro.
Diego's lifestyle is the antithesis of Revolutionary life. He enjoys the finer things--tea, opera, art. He does not do "voluntary work" for the Revolution. His small apartment is a sensual oasis. The moniker "bourgeois" figuratively hangs over his head during the early parts of the movie. However, he is a "Revolucionario" in his own way.
The supporting roles are filled by: an aging busybody with a heart of gold and a troubled psyche; David's roommate, who rally takes the Communist Party line to its expected extreme; David's ex-girlfriend, who dumped him for another guy, yet wants to bed him before she leaves for Italy with her husband; German, a gay sculptor whose work Diego is attempting to exhibit, and who strikes a Faustian pact with the government.
Gutierrez Alea and co-director Juan Carlos Tabio do a fine job at almost showing that homosexuals can be revolutionaries too. Heck, towards the end of the film you begin to think the guy deserves a medal for his patriotic fervor. He really loves the Revolution (as supposedly does everybody else in Cuba) and wants to make it better by exposing and correcting some of its flaws.
Real criticism is missing though. This movie is political window dressing. Luis Aguilar Leon's op. ed. piece on FRESA in THE MIAMI HERALD (10 March 1995, at 21A) did not color my judgment; it presaged my intuition. Aguilar Leon expressed my sentiment about this film's political angle best: Like many artistic manifestations in Cuba, STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE sprang from a totally manipulated environment. As art critic Ivan De La Nuez well states in the latest issue of the magazine POSTMODERN NOTES, the silenced artists are those who refuse to accept "the charade in which artists can provoke up to a point, while the institutions legitimize themselves by forbidding them to go beyond that point."
Although terrible propaganda, this is otherwise a fine film.
Leo's Rating (on the Internet movie database 1 to 10 scale): 8.
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