Customer Reviews

Up to a Certain Point [VHS]

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Director Tomas Gutierrez Alea, of "Guantanamera" and "Strawberry and Choclate" fame, made this movie before the aforementioned better known movies. Short and sweet at 70 minutes you might think other directors might take a cue from this one to get their point across. How many movies have you seen that should have ended but drag on for another 30 minutes? Call it cinema penance I guess. Anyway, this movie is a movie within a movie. The story takes place around the docks of Havana and surrounding area. It seems a filmaker is making a movie about machismo and feels the docks are the perfect place to get his material. The first few frames are grainy, documentary style footage of a rally and immediately one thinks , "oh, oh, it's a bang 'em over the head with propaganda movie." Then you'll be pleasantly surprised to see that the filmmakers are getting footage for their project, it's time to relax. Oscar is a filmaker who is at odds with one of the film honchos over how to make their movie, it seems the script is being worked on as they shoot, a fly by your pants opertion which makes for lively film dialogue. In the process of exposing machismo Oscar meets a very pretty, liberated woman dock worker named Lina, as played by the pretty Mirta Ibarra, that he takes a liking to. There are some complications to be resolved which basically make the movie. The actress who will be playing Lina, Oscar's love interest, is his wife who he introduces as "the actress who will be playing you", not introducing her as his wife. Remember the story is about machismo in Cuban society and Oscar is trying to illustrate that point, so there is alot of talk of what is fair for the goose is fair for the gander, que si, que no. Also Oscar does not have a complete script so the movie becomes the script for the film he is making. Conflicts and some solutions result, well, he gets his script finished but not has he envisioned it. The acting is pretty good, the music is very nice, but there is not enough of it for those of us that love musica Cubana. There is a lovely Basque song in one part that is exquiste, I wish there were more. The movie examines the roles of men and women in Cuba which is not unlike other Latin American countries. Men want to hold on to yesteryear in these times of equality for the sexes and there is where the conflict lies. The best part of the movie is that it was short and sweet, a pseudo-documentary within a film that makes you laugh at it's contradictions.