In Alea’s Fresa y Chocolate(1993), the Cuban issue of machismo is addressed mainly through the character development of David, a Cuban revolutionary. This dynamic character is primarily presented as a young man who adheres to the machismo attitude superficially but without full understanding or conviction. In the first scene, David brings his girlfriend into a run-down hotel room where he courteously tries to get her undressed after turning off the lights. His girlfriend, assuming that David simply wishes to use her, does not realize that he, under the influence of chauvinistic propaganda, might not know any other way to show his true love. After turning away from him, she turns toward the bedside light, saying, “All you wants is sex, like all men”.
With a better lit screen, her confrontation is seen in a more positive light than the dark and assumedly chauvinistic foreplay. Accordingly, David tells her that he can wait until they’re married and in a classy hotel to have sex. Here his own morals are better illuminated, or as Santi asserts, “David's moral hygiene [is] a fact established as early as the first scene”(15). From this point, the audience may begin to expect, or at least hope for David’s full transformation. A greater challenge to David’s seemingly chauvinistic character appears in the next scene when he is joined by Diego, a seemingly flamboyant homosexual, at a table where he is eating ice cream. The flavors chosen by the characters are largely symbolic of their differing sexualities – David eats chocolate, while Diego eats strawberry. Although David is not a bigot at heart, in this scene he nonetheless harbors some feelings of prejudice against Diego. After all, “Diego is gay, religious and a nationalist, while David is straight, an atheist and a communist”(10-Santi). While David tries to ignore Diego, the camera maintains both on a horizontal plane.
Such an editing technique shows the deserved equality for both characters, that which David abstains from granting. Even as David is roped into Diego’s life by his novel ideas, literature, and art, he still gathers information about Diego’s sacrilege against the state. Of course, Diego has his fair share of sabotage as he continually tries to seduce the young counterpart. However, as the characters spend more time together and confront one another about their differing beliefs, they start to feel guilty about undermining one another. Having learned much from Diego, David realizes that his own government is wrong to persecute people like Diego, but knows that nationalists will not be tolerated. Therefore, when Diego stands next to the wall of nationalist and communist trinkets, representative of their differing ideals, he challenges David with the question, “Someday I could say hello to you in public?” The answer known, David lowers his head.
On a personal level, both Diego and David have come so close to absolute reconciliation.
However, as the lighting in this scene suggests, they still have their differences. As Diego chooses to challenge the government, so exiling himself, David cannot convince himself to do the same. Near the end, Diego apologizes for trying to seduce David; and yet, David cannot bring himself to apologize for informing the Communists about Diego’s sacrileges. So as Santi says, “under the banner of a strong nationalism the film proposes the eventual reconciliation of the two political halves of the Cuban nation, torn asunder for almost four decades by the Communist regime.”(4), the keyword here is ‘eventual’. As a melodrama, the film vies for liberal acceptance and compassion, making headway through the intellectual transformation of a superficially chauvinist character; but in the end, justice for Diego does not triumph. Still, with so much of the movie revolving around Diego, and his gay, religious lifestyle, this Cuban film has a largely liberal tone. This melodrama therefore sends the message, that in response to chauvinism, ultimate liberal justice for the age of Cuban machismo is unfortunately unattainable.In the Spanish film noir, La Mala Educación, the issue of chauvinistic behavior never completely resolves itself either. The story originates from the sexual abuse and manipulation of a boy named Ignacio by Monolo, a Catholic priest. Needing revenge, Ignacio does blackmail Monolo, but never finds his lost love, Enrique, from Catholic school. Thus, his life is not restored to what he dreamed it to be. By the time the audience meets him, the young Catholic boy has become a transvestite junkie. When the cost of drugs starts getting out of hand, Ignacio begins stealing money from his family. His brother, Juan (alias Angel), along with Monolo(who is now in a relationship with Juan) decide to kill him for demonstrating the same privileged identity that excused Monolo’s predatory actions under Franco’s fascist regime. However, before Ignacio dies, he leaves an autobiographical play that shapes his life a bit more continuously through fiction. In it, he is portrayed as a thieving homosexual whore, but one who eventually finds Enrique. Of course, Juan, having helped murder Ignacio, decides that his brother’s dream is still within mortal reach. He then proceeds to do all of the things Ignacio desired, both in real life and fiction. Not only does he take on a relationship with Monolo, for which he can achieve a later vengeance; he also meets the real Enrique and succeeds in having a relationship with him, as warped as it may be. Juan even acts out the role of Ignacio in his own idealist play. However, the film’s director, who happens to be the real Enrique, decides that all cannot go according to plan - Ignacio must die at the hands of Monolo. After acting out the altered last shot, Juan cannot help but sob. Now he can sympathize with his dead brother, for he realizes that perfection is unattainable.
Through the many twists and turns of its plot, this film noir adequately confuses the audience, logically and emotionally. The identities of the actors are so jumbled; even when everything comes together, the sense of the story still seems lost. Indeed, this is the feel characteristic of such liberally reactionary movies. When people realized that liberal justice could not always be achieved through vengeance or the state, they could likely sympathize with dissatisfied and alternative characters from the movie. After being subjected to the chauvinist motives of anyone from under Franco’s fascist Spain, people could not correct and restore all that had been brought into confusion. The advent of open homosexuality also served to befuddle those with absolutist definitions about sexuality. Such a fatalist, somber mood is achieved through the black and red mise-en-scène
, characteristic not only of vengeance, but also of film noir movies in general. (31 - LAM) The typical pessimism of film noir is also acknowledged through allusions to other noir movies in the background, as seen in the subway scene
. In conclusion, both Fresa y Chocolate and La Mala Educación, with their liberal portrayals of sexual and religious activity, addressed the abusive machismo sentiment that dramatically affected Cuba under its revolutionist movement and Spain under Franco’s fascist rule. David, the initially chauvinist Cuban, approaches the ideal of homosexual acceptance by befriending the intellectual, nativist-gay, Diego. However, in the end, David does not equate himself entirely with Diego, letting him be exiled from the still intolerant Cuba. The omnipresent iniquity of ethics is highlighted by means of mise-en-scène, cinematography, plot, and editing. In La Mala Educación, all of the characters try to live out mimicked ideals of justice through vengeance; yet, as the mood suggests, unhappiness accompanies these failures. Ultimately, it is uncertain whether the films deny the earthly capacity for justice, or if they simply consider it beyond the scope of newly liberalized states.
Works Cited
Barsam, Richard. Looking At Movies: An Introduction to Film. Second Edition. W.W.
Norton and Company. New York, London.
“Fresa y Chocolate”. UC Santa Barbara Department of Spanish and Portuguese Language
Literature Culture Film.
La Mala educación (2004). Movie Gazette.
Santí, Enrico Mario. “FRESA Y CHOCOLATE: THE RHETORIC OF CUBAN
RECONCILIATION”. ICCAS Occasional Paper Series. May 2001.
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