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Cuba and the Eternal Feminine
| Article
# : |
15931 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1989 |
1,474 Words |
| Author
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Cynthia Grenier
Cynthia Grenier is contributing editor to the Arts section of
The World & I. |
Recently in Havana, Cuban officials at ICAIC (the government film office) showed a group of visiting American screenwriters a new Cuban film. The island is agog with the expectation of gauging popular American reaction when the film is screened at film festivals in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
Titled Plaff!, a Spanish onomatopoetic rendering of Splat!, the film also bears another title, Demasiado miedo a la vida (Too much afraid of life). It is reminiscent of Italian comedies of the fifties and sixties, as well as of a Cuban film, Death of a Bureaucrat, made in the early sixties by Tomas Gutierrez Alea. Interestingly enough, Plaff!'s director, Juan Carlos Tabio, is a protege of Gutierrez.
Basic Black Comedy
The story, basically a black comedy, manages to portray the eternal feminine, cutting across frontiers and cultures, as well as to present a funny and somewhat critical picture of contemporary Cuba. The criticisms of the society will appear more obvious to Cubans than to foreign viewers, but some of the details are as sharp and precise as tiny razors.
Concha, wonderfully played by Daysi Granados (for the last three decades a leading Cuban actress), is a widow whose only son, a star baseball pitcher, marries Clara, a scientist working for a state laboratory. Concha loathes her daughter-in-law with a passion. She also can't stand her neighbor across the street who'd had an affair with Concha's late, philandering spouse. And then the eggs start landing--plaff!--almost hitting her, at the oddest moments, day and night. But who
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