Hello Hemingway

Director Fernando Perez's body of work is entirely different from most of his contemporaries working in the Cuban cinema, as his stories present ideas and situations that other directors wouldn't dare to take. One wonders how does he manage to get this films shown in his own country, or even abroad.

This film is full of symbolism. The parallel between Larita and the great American writer, Ernest Hemingway, specifically, his own work, The Old Man and the Sea, is at the center of the story.

Larita wants to overcome the obstacles in front of her to get a scholarship, but like the Old Man in the story, she ends up defeated by forces that are much bigger than her. As fate has it, the one time she goes looking for Hemingway at the villa where he lives, she is told the great writer is hunting in Africa.

We see Larita scanning the horizon, looking north. Well, some fifty years later, her fellow countrymen probably are using this area to stage the exodus in precarious vessels to go to Florida, or to a death at sea. In fact, Mr. Perez seems to be telling us the more things change, the more they stay the same, which is the case after more than forty years of the present regime in that country.

The best excuse for seeing this film is the beautiful work by the actress playing Larita, Laura de la Uz. She is totally convincing and a natural in the hands of her director.