Hormigas en la boca

Ants in the Mouth (two and a half stars) Directed by Mariano Barroso Country: Spain Year: 2004 Running time: 95 min Stars: Eduard Fernández, Ariadna Gil, Jorge Perugorría, José Luis Gómez

There are relatively few movies set in the pre-Castro period of Cuba's history, and I eagerly looked forward to this offering. It starts briefly in Barcelona in 1958 as political activist Martin Losada is released from jail and gets a ship to Havana. We see a bustling city with the distinctive limos of the period. Beneath the apparent luxury we glimpse beatings and arbitrary arrests (the U.S. -backed, exceedingly corrupt, Batiste movement is still in power). Martin is looking for his girlfriend Julia, but is soon informed by her uncle that she is dead. A large sum of money she brought with her has also vanished.

Working his way through connections, Martin meets a woman whose husband has been murdered by local senator Freddy Navarro. She wants him to kidnap the senator and shows him a piece of paper she has on which is written: "You will awake with ants in your mouth." The kidnap goes wrong and Martin is taken prisoner. The story is slowly pieced together through flashbacks and revelations and we discover things are not as they seem.

Ants in the Mouth has some nice atmospheric photography but is simply much of a muchness all the way through. The acting and other elements conform to the film noir approach but tend to be overly bland and fail to rise to a level which will maintain interest for the 95 minutes that it takes for Martin to solve the mystery and decide what to do about it. The title is slang for coming to a bad end, but this movie never rises above a mediocre middle long enough for us to care.

I'm quite a fan of the noir genre - the lighting, the seedy side of life, the femmes fatales. Apart from the occasional film, such as 'The Man Who Wasn't There', the genre is pretty much a thing of the past.

Which brings me to 'Ants in the Mouth'. Set in the late fifties, it exploits the period atmosphere with lovely automobiles (of the kind still seen in Havana), music, fashions and so on. The attention to period detail also includes news snippets alluding to the coming communist victory on the island.

The plot is also classic 'noir' territory: an ex-con, tracking down his money and his dame, meeting a variety of hoodlums and wealthy mobsters. There are enough twists in the story to keep the viewer watching, though those familiar with the genre will already be expecting them.

So far, the film is true to its aspirations. What I think it really missed was a pair of stars with that 'spark' between them, like Bogart and Bacall, or even Mitchum and Greer. The lead actors, Eduard Fernandez and Ariadna Gil, both Catalonians, also play Catalonians in the film, so I suppose they were chosen with this in mind, and they do quite well with the material - well, just not superbly.

Overall, this is an interesting addition to the noir category. Its location and period detail are its real draw-card, with a story that is standard, and acting that is very competent, but which hardly sets the screen alight.

The main character in "Hormigas en la Boca" leaves Spain in the late 50s, when Franco's dictatorship was in all its glory, and moves to Cuba months before that Castro's revolution triumphs... Well, that doesn't seem like a good idea, but I guess if you're a freedom fighter you'll have troubles wherever you go. But this man has iron ideals and he's chasing something even more powerful than that: blind love.

Mariano Barroso demonstrates once again that he's a reliable film-maker, brilliant and serious (that ain't easy to find in the Spanish scene). He brings us a nice story and a nice cast (I specially like Eduard Fernández, he's probably the best Spanish actor of his generation).

*My rate: 7/10

I just saw this film yesterday at the Denver Film Festival which is showing in competition under the English title Ants in the Mouth. Although this is not a new story, a guy gets out of prison to look for the woman who double crossed him, nor told in a fresh style, it is well filmed and entertaining none the less. The good guy protagonist is sympathetic, a real Humphrey Bogart kind of character that you hope will get out of it alive. The bad guy is a creditable bad guy and you hope he does get killed and the woman is beautiful and mysterious. The film is beautifully shot in a re-created Havana just before the rise of Castro with great period costumes and cars along with a lovely score reminiscent of Chinatown.