Strawberry and Chocolate is still an important film

03 July 2009- Made in 1994, when homosexuality was frowned upon in Cuba, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s film seems tamer now than it did. But then it was never really about being gay. Its subject now reveals itself as political and social freedom in Castro’s Cuba and this is what makes it an intelligent companion piece to Memories of Underdevelopment, Alea’s earlier film.

Perhaps because of the director’s high standing in Cuba, there was no censorship, and Strawberry and Chocolate was a considerable success, shown all over the world and eventually winning an Oscar nomination.

Its leading character is Jorge Perugorria’s Diego, a cultivated and unshrouded gay man living in a flat cluttered with books, records and art.

He picks up David (Vladimir Cruz), a handsome young Marxist who has broken up with his girl because she was shocked that he took her to a dingy hotel to have sex. She has now married another man and he is devastated.

Accepting the older man’s invitation, he goes home with him for coffee, which is accidentally split on his shirt. He has to take it off as Diego watches but nothing much else occurs. When David leaves, he is persuaded by a nosey party official to spy on his new friend. He knew he was a homosexual, he says, because he chose strawberry over chocolate ice cream in the park.

How Alea got away with his criticism of the regime — he says Havana, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, is “crumbling into shit” — we will never know. But that’s what’s important about this film, not the feeble course of the gay man’s hopeful seduction of his miserably orthodox and stuffy young companion.

Home Page

More Entertainment articles