"Fresa y chocolate" has more historical significance than cinematic merits: for the first time, a film from revolutionary Cuba openly treated homosexuality, from a point of view that it's too "safe" to create a controversy. It was greeted with great enthusiasm by Cuban homosexuals, including those that were victims of persecution during the 1970. But I am sorry to say that, being myself a mature homosexual from the Capitalist world who has gone through all kind of persecutions in life --literal and symbolic-- I find the story too clichéd and manipulative, and the main character a sad figure from the past, trapped in time and space. When it was made Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, whose masterpiece "Memorias del subdesarrollo" (1968) is among the best films of world cinema of all times, was terminally ill, so Juan Carlos Tabío (whose forte is comedy, including the classic "Demasiado miedo a la vida o Plaf") had to share the direction. The script by Senel Paz is tame, Vladimir Cruz is miscast and the whole affair is a bit boring and demodé.
Review of Strawberry & Chocolate
