Suite Habana

Grateful to Instituto Cervantes to bring this gem of a film to the Philippines ; a must see ; the soundtrack is also great. All the characters are really touching, especially the widower and his son. The film shows people struggling with their professional and private lives (a young construction worker who is also a ballet dancer !). Not knowing Cuba, I was wondering if contemporary Cuba is really like this : even the fridges are 1950s "vintage" ! Strangely enough, the films brought sadness and joy (or hope at least) at the same time and made me want to visit Cuba. 9/10

"People know my country as it is reflected in the world media. I tried to show how Cuban people actually live. I tried to show that we have dreams and hopes."

These were the words of the director; before I saw this excellent documentary in a special presentation for the foreign media, last November, in La Habana.

Technically, the movie has a fluent editing of parallel lives of Cuban people. The theme keeps the viewer a bit 'far' from the story; it is clear that the movie was made more for foreigners than the citizens. It has no dialogues; not even one word. Instead, it has very strong international visual symbols. So gains, the word 'Suite', its own international meaning.

Suite Habana, tries to show that excluded Cuban Society, is no different actually from all other societies; in a very calm and sensitive way.

I can hardly keep myself revealing the 'very clever' magnificent surprise of the documentary! It is better I stop writing now... Hoping to see it, at least once more.

There's no need to have Spanish skills to understand the story told in this film. Blurring the lines between documentary and fiction (these are real people, telling "their" story, but they've been directed into scenes of "their lives).

At times it gets a bit cumbersome when the "characters" are not talking. You know they would be chatting away over their dinner of rice and beans but they are presented quiet and stoic.

But the story gets told without words and with amazing images of Havana. Having visited, I was overwhelmed by the truth in this movie, and impressed that the subtle political message in this "apolitical" film was able to get out of Fidel's Cuba in the 21st century.

But by the end of the film I was overcome with emotion and sat for moments after the final message, tears overwhelming me. This type of film is manipulative to the extreme, but it's also the type of thing where you don't mind being manipulated.

I've brought everyone I can convince to see it.

It only took to see the trailer for me to break in tears.

I don't know to what point the movie is selfish in a way that if you never had to live in Cuba, the film can be "just a bit plain" and nothing else, the film will unfold flat before your eyes. However for "the others" the ones "had to leave" but lived there, every shot, every image and every sound counts. The Lighthouse at "El Morro", the Malecon, those delicious Cafe con Leches in the morning and sandwiches at lunch (if lucky) can mean a whole different deal. It was hard to watch the airport lounges and the runway, and the guy getting on the plane. Also the part where you can see an old Silvio still singing "Mariposas" after so many years, Is tough for anyone to go back and think of those moments, or think of the people that we left behind.

...and more importantly, with a decent structure. The conceit - cut between a dozen people living in Havana to show what a day in the life of the city is like - is immensely appealing to the humanist in me. But it's more like a dream of what Havana's like - everybody's noble; there's no signs of crime or any danger. It's like one of those films where the director tries to recreate his idyllic childhood, except it's set in the present. The radical in me would like to point out the "characters" invariably feel like stereotypes (except maybe the clown-doctor) - of course a lot of people do feel like stereotypes, and there's a lot of life in them; but in my experience a lot of people are also staunchly individual, and unless the Cold War propaganda was right this must be true in Cuba as well. So my reactions to the characters are just my stereotypical ones. Fathers caring for their sons are always sweet; infallible yet world-weary elders are always less so.

Much of the time this feels like a Kodak ad. That's still better than "Winged Migration". If you've got enough humanist in you, you'll find this warm enough and pretty enough to be worthwhile.