Up to a Certain Point (1983)
A theater director and script-writer falls for a female worker from the Havana docks, but his machismo, social and working conflicts, and the Cuban woman's condition interfere with their relationship.
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Reviews
Best movie of this year hands down!
The Worst Film Ever
A different way of telling a story
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
One of the ideas behind communism was that the genders were supposed to be equal. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's "Hasta cierto punto" ("Up to a Certain Point" in English) looks at how far that was coming in Cuba. The movie focuses on a theater director who falls for a female dockworker, but his machismo complicates their relationship. The main point that I derived from the movie is that ingrained cultural values can't get legislated away. Much like how anti-discrimination laws won't wipe out racism, the institutionalized gender equality that came about in Cuba after the revolution didn't abolish men's macho attitudes towards women. Can these things EVER get fixed?! Anyway, it's a good movie. Gutiérrez Alea, known as Titón to his friends, was representative of the 1960s-1970s movement known as New Latin American Cinema. He later directed "Strawberry and Chocolate" (the first Cuban movie to deal with homosexuality).