‘Sugar’ Goes to Heart of Anti-Castro View

No movie could be more anti-Castro than Leon Ichaso’s impassioned, operatic “Bitter Sugar,” a harrowing depiction of the gradual disillusionment of a young idealistic Havana student (Rene Lavan) and his tempestuous romance with a beautiful dancer (Mayte Vilan).

Seething with bitterness toward Castro, viewed as a betrayer of his people, Ichaso calls for nothing less than the dictator’s overthrow. At the same time, Ichaso is a strong enough storyteller to sustain his fervent protest with an emotion-charged drama punctuated with strobe-like collages and an intoxicating Caribbean beat. It doesn’t hurt that “Bitter Sugar’s” stars are talented and spectacular-looking.

Even before Ichaso’s point of view makes it clear that “Bitter Sugar” couldn’t possibly have been shot principally in Cuba, you may already suspect that all those Havana establishing shots are framing scenes staged elsewhere--Santo Domingo, as it turns out. Nonetheless, “Bitter Sugar” is pretty much all of a piece, with its black-and-white images contributing at once a serious tone and enabling a smooth integration of not only footage from Havana and Santo Domingo but also considerable archival materials.

“You must be the last Communist on Earth,” remarks Vilan’s Yolanda to Lavan’s Gustavo, but that doesn’t stop her from falling in love with him. Although naive--but ultimately more in regard to Yolanda than Fidel--Gustavo has armed himself in an idealism that persuades him to look beyond U.S. embargo miseries to a better day for Cuba. He’s been able to do this largely because one of his university professors has been encouraging him to believe he’s in line for a scholarship in aeronautical engineering at the University of Prague. (Never mind what kind of job opportunities he could expect back in Cuba, should he actually get the chance at such training.)

Meanwhile, his younger brother Bobby (Larry Villanueva) is a rockero, a rock musician and political radical who dares to defy brutally repressive government policies, and their widowed father (Miguel Gutierrez) has discovered that he can make more money playing nightclub piano at a hotel for tourists in one week than an entire month working as a psychiatrist.

In contrast to the Cuban-made “Strawberry and Chocolate,” which strove to balance criticism and cautious optimism, “Bitter Sugar” is relentless in its depiction of present-day Cuba as oppressive to one and all and to young people in particular. Significantly, Ichaso, who most recently directed “Sugar Hill” with Wesley Snipes, and all the key players are native Cubans, with Gutierrez a major veteran actor on stage and screen, until his immigration to the United States five years ago. There’s no question that some viewers will find “Bitter Sugar” one-sided, but it certainly succeeds on its own angry, up-front terms.

* Unrated. The film contains scenes of torture, some sex and some blunt language.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

‘Bitter Sugar’

Rene Lavan: Gustavo

Mayte Vilan: Yolanda

Miguel Gutierrez: Dr. Tomas Valdez

Larry Villanueva: Bobby

A First Look Pictures presentation. Director Leon Ichaso. Producers Ichaso, Jaime Pin~a. Executive producer Pelayo Garcia. Screenplay by Ichaso and Orestes Matacena. Cinematographer Claudio Chea. Editor Yvette Pin~eyro. Music Manuel Tejada. Additional music Jose Ferro Jr. Songs Vergilio Marti and Victor Victor. Production designer Liliana Soto. In Spanish, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

* Exclusively at the NuWilshire, 1314 Wilshire Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 394-8099; the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869; and Edwards South Coast Village, 1561 Sunflower Ave., Santa Ana, (714) 540-0594.