Saw Memories of Underdevelopment, a film set in the recent aftermath of the Cuban socialist revolution. It follows a wealthy landlord who was able to get his parents and wife out of Cuba but who is not leaving himself. He stays behind nominally to work on a novel but mostly really to hit on women and reminisce about his past and generally go slowly crazy.
This film is about death and rebirth. In the glow of the socialist revolution, something new is about to begin. But to make room for the new, something old must die. Specifically this man's way of life must end. Returning home from the airport, he finds his caged bird is dead. His maid tells him about her baptism, how it is a death and a rebirth. He meditates on the murders carried out for the revolution and how the foot-soldiers were condemned so that society at large could remain morally pure.
The main character is a member of the decadent landlord bourgeois intelligentsia, so despised by the revolutionaries. He is paralyzed by understanding - of wanting to preserve his way of life and also by despising it and despising himself. He's a stand-in for the upper class in general however and so his personal life mirrors his increasingly perilous sociopolitical situation. He starts dating a 16-year old girl who is too naïve to recognize herself as just another hookup. Like Cuba's new socialism, she is the fresh new thing, and although she is being exploited one last time by the older landlord, she may be the agent of his destruction.
The landlord rolls his eyes at his girlfriend's lack of appreciation of fine art and generally hates her childish naivete, but he himself lasciviously rubs the breasts of Venus in an art book. Several times his erotic imagination is displayed and used to indict him as shallow, decadent, bored and horny. When his maid tells him about her baptism, he imagines her wet white dress clinging to her breasts. He is certainly not naïve and immature, but is his decadence really any better?
The style of the film is very French New Wave, very Fellini. Lots of men in suits and thick glasses languishing in ennui and smoking in coffee shops, talking politics and philosophy and leering at women. Unlike those films, the action here is intercut with references to real events in the news which strongly grounds this landlord's struggle in larger events, but which is also fairly daring. The film is telling us that it is not just commenting on this fictional man, but on the historical events themselves. Always a tricky business.
The film was fairly interesting however a bit dated and chilly. It's hard to sustain a portrayal of wealthy decadence without having it become fairly boring after a while. By the 2/3rds mark I was ready for it to end, but I was pretty well entertained by it up until then.
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