Tat+Wolfen+attacks+Cuba+in+Saturday+Star

Saturday Star, December 23, 2006 //Edition 1//
=A cuba in shackles=




 * Tat Wolfen**

The Hollywood establishment has not done Cuba or its beleaguered citizens any favours. Its trendy-lefties have persistently portrayed Fidel Castro as a cuddly, avuncular, cigar-chomping champion of the people, conveniently ignoring his iron-fisted rule under which all opposition has been brutally crushed.

Enter then, Cuban-born actor Andy Garcia who in The Lost City, his feature film debut, tells a compelling story of a wealthy Cuban family, the Felloves (and, in particular nightclub owner Fico - played by Garcia himself) whose lives are torn apart by Castro's "people's revolution" of the late '50s. Fico's nightclub, the El Tropico, is the very epicentre of Havana's fashionable set, and features the hottest music acts in town.

Of course, this is just another splendid excuse to populate the film's seductive soundtrack with dangerously wicked Latin rhythms. Interestingly, the film's score was penned by Garcia himself, entrenching the auteur's touch in every fibre of this heartfelt cinematic work.

The Fellove dynasty has, within its ranks, idealistic youthful factions: Fico's brother Luis (Nestor Carbonell) supports the wide-eyed optimism of a Castro takeover, while Ricardo (Enrique Murciano) actually dons camouflaged togs and joins the revolution's footsoldiers, to his parent's dismay. As these intense scenes of family conflict play themselves out, one gains the impression that the words are torn from the anecdotal history of actual Cuban families.

Ricardo, in the throes of revolutionary fervour, neglects his wife, the beautiful Aurora (Inés Sastre), whose attentions then turn to Fico, providing the film's romantic angle. But her allegiances are also torn…

Adding elements of intrigue and even levity to the tale, are some fine character performances. Dustin Hoffman is amusing as Meyer Lansky, the mob boss with dreams of starting a casino empire based on the elegant style of Fico's nightclub. And Hollywood's posterboy of quirk, Bill Murray, shines as a cynical American writer who wryly observes the changes around him from behind the rim of a cocktail glass - a jaded court jester who knows enough to calmly expect the worst…

Make no mistake; Garcia and the film's writer (the now-deceased Cuban writer and film reviewer, Guillermo Cabrera Infante) have not attempted to paint the corrupt Batiste regime, which preceded the Castro years, as a model of upright governance. Garcia and Infante reveal a passionate longing, instead, for a Cuba free of not only Batiste's fat-cat fascism but also of the miseries wrought by Castro and his deadly playmate, Che Guevara. Ironically, Infante was a communist who was jailed for his opposition to the Batiste regime, became a cultural attaché for Castro, and ended up living in exile from the country he so loved. It seems that he never reconciled his idealism with communism's ugly realities.

The Lost City was shot in the Dominican Republic, as Garcia refuses to return to a Cuba under Communist rule - and probably wouldn't be welcomed by Castro either, given that the bearded despot would undoubtedly prefer to be portrayed as the benevolent father of a nation, rather than the tyrant he's proven himself to be.

There's an incidental cautionary tale for countries such as South Africa hidden within the film's complex folds - that popular freedom leaders which take over from corrupt and despotic regimes should be careful that they, too, don't degenerate into the same regime themselves.

Every frame of this passion-fuelled film speaks of the beauty and sadness that is Cuba. Bravo, Garcia!


 * From: http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3604510**

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