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Habana Eva review
:. Director: Fina Torres
:. Starring: Prakriti Maduro, Yuliet Cruz
:. Running Time: 1:46
:. Year: 2011
:. Country: Venezuela, Cuba
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When it comes to movie advertising, the studios marketing and PR people are pretty good at making you believe a film is good and you need to read closely between the lines to find out if it's just overhype or genuine praise. For example, any superlative from Rolling Stone's Peter Travers is a travesty as this so-called critic is known as a sellout who's only purpose is seeing his name on as many posters as possible. On the contrary, reading a positive quote from the New Yorker or the New York Times means that you are in good hands. In the same way, not all festivals share the same influence on the circuit and an award from some local film festival wouldn't have as much weight as a prize from the Cannes, Toronto or Berlin film festivals. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, because Habana Eva will be introduced to you as the winner of several fests including the LA and NY latino film festivals. If you do your homework, you will find out that these events are not particularly reputed for their outstanding film selection. And even though director Fina Torres won the Cannes camera d'or prize a few years ago, you shouldn't be fooled: Habana Eva is nothing else that big screen soap filled with poor acting, a kitsch direction and a risible storyline.
The film is centered on Eva (Prakriti Maduro) a preppy young Cuban girl who is stuck between two men and two worlds. On one hand, she is engaged to a local Cuban man and works at a factory. On the other hand she is in love with a Venezuelan photographer and wants to become an entrepreneur. As one will easily understand, Eva is a metaphor for Cuba, the island being faced with two directions: keeping its traditional communist roots or embracing capitalism. If this idea was making for a good premise on paper, its onscreen execution is a huge mess.
If you ever flipped through your TV channels and watched some telenovela for fun, for a few minutes, this would give you an idea of how Habana Eva looks like: Except for Ms. Maduro, the ensemble cast is in full overacting mode, while the director's camera focuses on capturing its actors in various poses: sitting and thinking in front of the ocean, working without a shirt on at any time of the day or night (where is Matthew McConaughey when you need him?), turning your head like you're in a shampoo commercial, etc … There is also the best friend, a prostitute with a big heart who comes back as a ghost as well as the two green old aunts - yes you read it well, their skin is green and they are sort of the two fairies of this story. Add to the mix some corny sequences and dialogues that make for unintentional laughs and you should get a pretty clear idea of what Habana Eva is about. The charm of Ms. Maduro, a few beautiful shots of dilapidate buildings and a subplot involving selling Cuban prime real estate are not enough to save Habana Eva: instead of just paying homage to the island, this film embarrasses it.
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: Foreign Films
Movie Reviews: from 1998 to 2011
Reviews since 2012
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