|
PAGES FROM MAURICIO’S DIARY
New Cuban film
reaches the screen
• Director Manuel Pérez returns to
fiction
BY MIREYA CASTAÑEDA— Granma International
staff writer—
CUBAN cinema has a new offering. This is the
feature film Páginas del Diario de Mauricio (Pages
from Mauricio’s Diary), by Manuel Pérez in a Cuban
Film Institute (ICAIC), Fénix PC and Estudios
Churubusco Azteca coproduction.
The movie is Manuel Pérez’ return to fiction
after more than 20 years without filming – to whom
Cuban cinema owes title’s like El Hombre de
Maisinicú (The Man from Maisinicú, 1977) and
Río Negro (Black River, 1984) – and he has made
it in a different tenor. He has moved from epic to
introspection, to an intimate story, but located at
a crucial point in history, the time that runs from
the end of the 80s to the year 2000.
Páginas ¼
covers a story with a profound
human content. It begins one day in September 2000.
While the Olympic Games are taking in Sydney,
Australia, in Havana Mauricio spends his 60th
birthday in Havana, alone and devastated by the
unexpected loss of his wife.
For the central character, the director selected
actor Rolando Brito, who has likewise returned to
the set after various years without being in a film.
His last movie La vida es silbar (Life’s a
Whistle) was in 1998 under the direction of Fernando
Pérez.
Brito is accompanied by a cast of known and
experienced actors and new ones, headed by Enrique
Molina, Larissa Vega, Blanca Rosa Blanco, Yipsia
Torres, María Teresa Pina, Raúl Pomares and Patrico
Wood. Moreover, there is that leading character that
Cuban filmgoers will recognize, the 90s, a decade of
profound social, economic and political change.
An existentialist work, Páginas del diario de
Mauricio concentrates on certain episodes and
recollections in the life of that solitary man, and
thus the filmmaker utilizes retrospection to present
diverse and defining stages in the life of its main
character.
Director Manuel Pérez is supported by photography
from the experienced Raúl Rodríguez, the music of
Pablo Milanés and Miguel Núñez, sound by Raúl
García, artistic direction by José Manuel Villa and
editing by Pedro Suárez.
The film, in some ways a story of love and enmity,
is narrated in the first person with a heavy use of
interior monologue and voice off. As its director
points out, the title,
Páginas del diario...
is totally in accordance
with the style and structure of the film.
Manuel Pérez has affirmed that his interest has
also been "to transmit sentiments, atmospheres on
what, for one sector of the Cuban population – those
aged around 60 – all these recent years have been."
Being a diary, the film naturally has a
confessional tone. A new offer from Cuban cinema
that is disassociated from others recently premiered
like Gente del pueblo (Small Town People,
Humberto Solás), Bailando Chachacha (Dancing
Cha-cha-cha, Manuel Herrera), Mata que Dios
perdona (He Kills Whom God Pardons) or Viva
Cuba (Juan Carlos Cremata).
|
