Product Description

Studio: New Yorker Films Video Release Date: 10/10/2000 Run time: 104 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18931 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-10-10
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: Spanish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
From the Cuban directors of Strawberry and Chocolate (Tomás Gutiérrez and Juan Carlos Tabio) comes a poignant romantic comedy with satiric bite. Yoyita is a famous singer who returns to the town of Guantanamo for a celebration in her honor. Reunited with her girlhood lover Candido after 50 years, she dies in his arms from overstimulation. The farce of returning her body to Havana for proper burial provides the vehicle for an easygoing yet incisive overview of contemporary Cuba and a lighthearted admonishment to live for the moment. Yoyita's niece Gina, who is a former professor of economics, and her tyrannical husband, who is the official undertaker for the remote province, make up the procession, along with the forlorn Candido. As the cortege makes its way toward the capital, Gina is given a second chance at love with a hunky truck driver while we become privy to the clandestine restaurants, abject road stops, and endless slogans that populate the hitherto underexposed Cuban countryside. --Fionn Meade

Customer Reviews

'Fresa y Chocolate' better, but watch them both
Filmmakers Tomás Gutiérrez & Juan Carlos Tabio made 'Guantanamera' almost back-to-back with 'Fresa y Chocolate' (Strawberry and Chocolate), and that's how I recommend you view them - rent/buy them as a pair and watch them chronologically, 'Fresa' first.

First, there's the thrill of seeing Mirtha Ibarra and Jorge Perugorría in repeating appearanences, portraying vastly different characters. Of special note is Perugorría's demonstrated range and acting ability. I spent the first half-hour of Guantanamera thinking "That just can't be the same guy."

It was. Amazing stuff.

Also, the film itself presents a take on Cuban life that, while patently absurd to any American, no doubt rings all too true with anyone who has experienced life under Fidel's heavy thumb. Taken together, these two films represent 3 hours of what movies are all about: for me, they were enjoyable and educational; for the filmmakers, they scored a direct hit on the target of their disdain and sarcasm.

Left me laughing and crying all at the same time!!!
As much as I loved "Fresa Y Chocolate" (Strawberry & Chocolate), I love this one even more. The script is superior, and we have the opportunity to meet a wider range of characters, with equally brilliant casting and filming.

If you have seen "Fresa Y Chocolate", then you already love Mirtha Ibarra and Jorge Perugorría. If not, then you will after having seen this film.

If Cheech & Chong, the Marx Brothers & Woody Allen had all collaborated, they couldn't have come up with a film more irreverent, more bitingly satirical, or more delicious with both romance and irony.

And speaking of irony, it seems both impossible that such a film could have come from Cuba in the 1990's, and yet equally impossible for it to have come from any other place. For we have been told, on the one hand, that such burlesque of the Cuban government is not tolerated. Yet, it has always seemed to me that the greatest art arises from the greatest suffering. And Cuba is one of the world's greatest examples of this paradox of human nature. For few nations have suffered as much as the people of Cuba have suffered through out her entire history. And yet, from that island emerges the most beautiful music on earth, and now this!!!

Do yourself a big favor: Don't miss this film!!!

A refreshing Cuban road movie not lacking a sense of irony
The last movie that Cuban director, Tomás Gutiérrez managed to put together alongside his partner, Juan Carlos Tabio, before his death, Guantanamera pretty much can be considered a road movie, but with a very peculiar twist. Irony, an exquisite sense of the most Cuban humor and an important dose of reality can be found in this production, that came only one year after their super-successful "Strawberry and Chocolate," with repeating stars, Mirta Ibarra and Jorge Perugorría, who proved how versatile of an actor he could be: playing a gay character on the first one and a straight macho man on this one. Check it out. You will find it delightful and refreshing. I just give it four stars because it does fall short compared to S&C, its predecessor.