Amada

Although absolutely stilted with soap opera clichés and dialogue, the best thing I found about this film was it's lush cinematography. Livio Delgado certainly knows how to light and shoot people to startling effect. As for the story, well, An unhappily married woman finds solace with her cousin while her husband fools around with the maid, meanwhile, a family battle is brewing about their soon-to-be-dead mother's estate. The dialogue is NOTHING you would hear from anyone's mouth except in movies like this, people talking religion vs the state, liberals vs conservativism... in love scenes! It's alright, if you can get past the stilted dialogue and whatnot :)

This movie has an excellent photography. Many of the frames look like paintings from Rembrandt. The use of light is wonderful and remembered me some of the takes from "The Garden of Finzzi Contini". Landscape and architecture from Havana is incredible. The film is a little slow but as the internal way of thinking of the characters is complex. Anyway the acting must be recognized as one of the best films produced during the revolutionary era in Cuba. One remarkable fact is that politics is just as the background of the plot and not the main course.The house where Amada lives is part of the plot and with the advance of the movie shadows are more and more evident. Idillic recreation of the moments with Marcial remember some of the best of the Italian neorealist movement.

Mostly, Humberto Solas's "Amada" - meaning "beloved" - is a story of a woman in an unhappy marriage, having an affair with an outsider; similar to Frank Perry's "Diary of a Mad Housewife". Probably the most significant aspect is the historical context: not only is the movie set during WWI amid a popular movement to oust the US-backed regime, but there's also the end scene. I assume that one of the movie's purposes is remind people of life prior to the Revolution (yes, they like to capitalize it). Although most of the movie focuses on an affluent family, the final scene looks like an affirmation that one day, the Cuban people would throw off the shackles of US domination.

Anyway, I wouldn't call "Amada" the ultimate masterpiece, but I would still recommend it. I wonder how many more Cuban movies there are that our government won't let us watch due to a Cold War mentality.