Chamaco (2010) Reviews

• Sex and Death in La Habana

  EdgarST2014-08-19

  Daring but static film adaptation of Abel González Melo's play, "Chamaco" is a stagy production, the more so for the aesthetic resolution taken by director Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti, of filming almost everything as if from the fifth row in a theater, and for the performances of several players, especially Francisco García, as an aging homosexual, repeating the over-the-top type of representation that served him a bit better in "Molina's Ferozz" to play a grandmother wicker than the Wolf. A dark and gloomy portrait of people of the night, "Chamaco" tells a dramatic story of cruel and cold sexuality among several persons from La Habana and a young man from the country side: they all use each other for financial reasons, in a general landscape of economic and spiritual misery, leading to a tragic ending -or beginning, as its structure often resorts to flashbacks. Cremata created high expectations with his thesis film made at the Cuban international film school, and then made "Nada", an interesting first feature. But in the following years he opted for stage works that he has not been quite successful at bringing to the screen. This is one of those unfortunate cases.