GUANTANAMERA

Yoyita, a famous Cuban singer, returns to her hometown of Guantanamo after 50 years, seeks out her long-time beau Candido (Raul Eguren) and on their first reunion, dies happily in the devastated Candido’s arms. Having waited so long, Candido believes it necessary to follow Yoyita’s body back to Havana for burial. The entourage that follows Yoyita’s coffin on this funeral journey includes her lovely, unhappily married, one-time professor Georgina (Mirtha Ibarra), and her undertaker husband, Adolpho (Carlos Cruz). Adolpho is in charge of the funeral transportation and is determined to prove to the bureaucrats that he can get the body from Guantanamo to Havana using much less gasoline than has ever been done before.

With this premise, the film rolls into action. Along with the funeral entourage, other travelers are also making their way to Havana, including the big-hearted Pedro, a truck driver, and Mariano (Jorge Perugorria) who has a girl at every service stop and is constantly flirting with them. When they cross paths, Georgina and Mariano are pleasantly startled. Flashbacks show that Mariano was once a student of Georgina and had written her a love note. Their lives had taken different directions until now, but the flame still burns.

Along the way, Mariano and Georgina keep bumping into each other through the journey’s strange twists and turns of events. Their reconciliation is inevitable, especially since Adolpho becomes a man trapped by his own obsessions, oblivious to everything else even as his wife is drifting off into the arms of another.

Breaking into newly-written lyrics from the folk hit, Guantanamera, from Pete Seeger -Hector Angulo , the film uses the song to introduce almost chapter-like sequences to the story. The film takes its premise lightly but with an underlying sardonic look at Communist Cuba. Instead of showing deprived and depressed people, the film makes its characters cheery and bouncy. Not impervious to their surroundings, the people in the story dance around their difficulties and inconveniences with light banter and a verve for the optimistic. Intermittent scenes of ordinary folk bartering bananas, garlic and dead chickens along the way provide interesting and humorous asides to the Communist way of life.

Other than this, the film plods along with an overblown theme of romantic love that borders heavily on soap opera. Sensitivity is drowned in over-sentimentality, especially in the re-blossoming of love between Mariano and Georgina. Even though Georgina is married, the film gushes over these two with all the irresponsibility of adolescence. Also, the film merely laughs and pats Mariano on the back for escaping the clutches of one girl after another. Even elderly Candido, who puts in the best performance by far, encourages Georgina not to waste her life on Adolpho but to seek her true happiness in someone else’s arms if need be. With such loose morals, this comedy makes a mockery of marriage and marital fidelities.