Historias clandestinas en La Habana

Ok, this isn't great cinema, but it's very sweet and entertaining and is certainly as good as most of the romantic comedies coming out of Hollywood. Plus, you get to see Havana, which looks gorgeous in this film, and you get to see some very good acting. The secondary characters are just as interesting as the main characters. I like the idea of overlapping stories because it shows that everyone, regardless of age, nationality, race and sexual persuasion, just wants to be happy in love. The older characters (Ulyses Dumont and Veronica Lynn) are especially endearing. Sure, it's not "realistic" that all of these characters would meet each other on the streets of Havana by accident, but since when do we measure romantic comedies in those terms? This film captures the special charm that Havana and Cuba in general has for visitors from other places, and it really does make you fall in love with the island. It's not a political film. It doesn't make you want to run out and become a communist. If anything, it's just a romantic and idealized travelogue, but what's wrong with that? As long as you're not expecting anything else, you won't be disappointed.

I have never seen so many commonplaces packed in 70 minutes of film. We have a magic place in which people fall in love instantly or find their lost loves thanks to the attraction of the magic beautiness of the land; honest people who find each other; bunches of good natives and most of all: poor acting.

On top of that, the movie, with its constant references to Che Guevara, to the evilness of money and to the sacrifice of the people, is a badly disguised propaganda of Castroism, trying to perpetuate the myth of "a dream that failed because it was too beautiful". This is Marxism for tourists at its worse. It works like a bad parody of Endless Love surrounded by natives.