I went to this movie thinking I was going to see the greatest living artists in Cuba, or something close to that. This, the artists chosen for this movie were not. It wasn't until over halfway through that I discovered why. Suddenly instead of being in Havana, Cuba, we were in Boston, Massachusetts. WTF. Oh! we are looking at some gallery that exhibits Cuban artists. Wait! I know that place. I live in the area. Sometimes, I go to the SOWA galleries off Washington Street. This gallery is there. Usually my friends and I just skip this place because the artists are, well, mediocre, maybe cutesy, maybe using cubist or like techniques that were old fifty years ago. They are not downright bad, like some of the art in the SOWA galleries. They are mediocre.
Somehow, the guy who made this film became friends with the owner of this gallery, who must have given him an open introduction to all the artists in his "stable". So instead of doing the hard legwork necessary to really find out the great living artists of Cuba, the filmmaker just had an easy, lazy work of it. Unfortunately that meant that I missed out on a real film with the real artists of Cuba who are doing really great stuff. That will come sometime later. I HOPE.
Finally, I am interested in artists because of their visual imagination. I am not interested in them as talking heads--which is what they are in this movie.
Reviews
2 Reviews
El Gusto
(2011)
I am glad to be the first to review this wondrous movie
16 December 2013
Just going on tour through the Medina in Algiers with one of these wild characters defines Picaresque, Romantic, Nostalgic and Beautiful. I will not soon forget that. I don't think the Woman who made this ever did a movie before, but her direction, cutting and empathy with the characters is amazing. This is much more than the music, more than the characters and more than the history which came and cast them asunder. Director Safinez Bousbia stirred and mixed it all together like a great cook. Here this character, here that one, here the music, here this city, here that, here the revolution, then back again. The resulting meal is fit for Shahryar, the King as he listens to Sheherezade, the storyteller. It is not Perfect, so it doesn't get a ten. But it is way, way up there.
Tell Your Friends