I do not know that to say; during the first days of festival what I had seen up to the moment was great pain, raw and hard realism prepared with polemic situations, whether they were pure fiction or based on real facts.
La película de Ana, the most recent release by Cuban Daniel Díaz Torres came to be kind of a encouragement sigh in the face of so much visual bleakness that up to the moment I had watched.
I was not prepared to amuse myself so much, I must confess it.
The history that is presented to us to tells about Ann (Laura de la Uz), a fifth-level actress house, who has not given the jump that could take her out of a praiseworthy misery, of a gossipy and sententious mother (a brilliant Paula Alí), an envious and hysterical sister and a husband (Tomás Cao) who has not been lucky as publisher of audio-visual works either.
The moment comes, but not of the way she was expecting. The role of her life, which would give her the biggest economic and spiritual pleasure, had to be so truthful that she had to live it or at least, to feign that she was living through it.
Ana had to be a nameless prostitute, of those that they backtrack the nights of Havana in search of sex and money, to earn the money that some Austrians were offering for a documentary about pimping in the World. Thinking that it was an easy piece she looked for the support of Flavia (Yuliet Cruz), a high class hooker who taught her trade: seducing, speaking, walking, even looking at each other. The plot starts getting complicated when they ask her to make a full-length film about her life.
It was simple to amuse yourself on having seen the transformation of an insecure and shy Ana, in another trying to walk with sensuality, with wigs and extravagant make-ups, coquettish and extrovert in the creation of her personage of “a girl of the easy life”.
With script of Eduardo del Llano and Díaz Torres, the dialogues, although sometimes coarse, provided the movie with of a consisting realism that brings it over more to the public, who gets identified with the story.
Of the performances what to say … Laura de la Uz every day shows her makes of good actress, sure and capable of assuming any role; Yuliet for her part, repeats in the comedy (remember her in Habana Eva with a role similar) in a character that she embodies without any problem, with naturalness and test of her dynamism as actress (a proof of that is her role in Melaza, debut movie by Carlos Lechuga, also in contest in this festival).
The rest of the actors contributed their salt to the success of this movie, giving it an interesting contrast on the story. An interesting imagery, which he didn’t hesitate to show, even from comedy, shows other sides not seen so often of Cuban reality. A call perhaps to the acknoledgement of a problem that exists and of the multiple causes that provoke it today.
Author
José Ernesto González Mosquera
