Venice

Venice is a movie from Cuba, which you don’t see much of around here. The last movie from Cuba I saw was Our Man In Havana, which was filmed in 1958. There's probably been more recent movies, but they haven't hit the local multiplexes recently, gosh I wonder why.  Venice is the story of three girls in Cuba somewhere, hairdressers, who go out together for a night on the town. A journey into the heart of darkness. Yeah, it’s just like Apocalypse Now, three girls’ odyssey into the dark heart of the Cuban dream. Except instead of Vietnam-era GIs it’s female cosmetologists. And instead of the upriver Southeast Asian jungle (“That’s Cambodia, Captain.” “That’s classified.”) it’s some bars and dance clubs. And instead of being based on a foundational member of the Western literary canon, it’s not. And instead of the drama, and the suspense, and the ineluctable unmooring of reality and casting off of common human morality, and the explosion of the sordid underbelly of the human psyche, there’s three girls talking getting progressively drunker and talking about boys. Wait a minute, why am I watching this again?

This was directory Kiki Alvarez’s second picture (Mr. Alvarez is a guy, hard to tell from the name, so you can’t just write this off as a chick flick). One of the actresses was also the writer, Claudia Muñiz, who played Violeta. The tiff. programmer said she saw the film being workshopped when she was visiting Cuba and fell in love with it then. Remind me again how I can become a programmer for a film festival?

 

The camaraderie between the three girls was sincere and energetic and spontaneous, and the characters were all interesting to watch, and their interactions had a juice that was undeniably authentic, and I have the feeling I would have liked it better if I found the experience of watching three girls talk to each other about clothes and boys more inherently interesting in itself. I suspect I do not belong to the target audience for this film, but what did I just say about it not being a chick flick?

 

 

Comments

[Haynes-linda]

okay,
here is what I think, and I say this, not having seen the movie, only having read your review and watched the trailer,that said..
well... I do not think that it is a chick flick either, unless you are speaking of the very young chicks who still think that going out to get drunk and lure the boys,would be great fun, in the same way that that boys like to lure the girls at at that age, collecting trophies,and then discarding them, I was a foolish young thing myself, once upon the time, so I do recall that then it WAS fun, but now to sit through watch such a movie, this seemingly noisy and drunken film with no particular story to tell, frankly,it sounds too tedious to bear, and so I thank you very much for this review and the video of the Movies trailer made your point clear, that it is a
good movie to skip.
thank you again for the tip off.

Linda