A Cuban Road Trip Full of Wit, Wisdom and Life

“Guantanamera!” is a screen valedictory most filmmakers would envy, a funny and poignant comedy unfolding on a trouble-plagued journey from Guantanamo to Havana. The film is a heartfelt expression of a love of life and a brave acceptance not only of the inevitability but the necessity of death.

With his health failing, Cuba’s leading director, the late Tomas Gutierrez Alea, collaborated with Juan Carlos Tabio, an esteemed writer and director in his own right, on two final films, this one and “Strawberry and Chocolate.”

Both show a Cuba beset by poverty and hardship, an economic system breaking down before our eyes. Yet at the same time, both films celebrate the Cuban people in their warmth, humor and resilience and both abound with a love of Cuba.

Gutierrez Alea, who died last year after a long battle with lung cancer, first made his mark in world cinema with his 1968 masterpiece, “Memories of Underdevelopment.” It was a penetrating study of a handsome upper-middle-class man, not unlike Gutierrez Alea himself, who makes a last-minute decision not to flee with his family to Miami when Castro takes power and instead stays to see what the Communist future holds for him.

An early idealistic Castro supporter and a founding member of Cuba’s respected Cinematographic Art and Industry Institute, Gutierrez Alea expressed in his films his attempts to embrace Marxism and his increasing disenchantment with its consequences.

“Guantanamera!,” accompanied by the famous song on the soundtrack, involves a journey, one of the most ancient metaphors for the passage of life that, on-screen, has yielded such classic movies as John Ford’s “Stagecoach” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries.”

In “Guantanamera!,” Carlos Cruz plays Adolfo, a government bureaucrat who has lost his standing. He sees a chance to regain it with a cumbersome gas-saving, cost-cutting scheme that would require that a hearse be stopped at every town along the way to a burial destination to have its casket transferred into a local hearse (thus no given city would use more than its gas ration). When someone close to Adolfo dies, he finds himself at the mercy of the time-consuming system he has devised.

So many stops allow for much to happen, most significantly the continual crossing of paths of Adolfo’s wife, Gina (Mirtha Ibarra), and one of her former students, Mariano (Jorge Perugorria).

A respected and outspoken economics professor, Gina has given up her career in sheer frustration over the state of Cuba and her sense of powerlessness to do anything about it and has resigned herself, more or less, to be a dutiful, traditional Latina wife.

Mariano, who was smitten by his elegant professor and even once sent her a love letter (she was flattered but didn’t respond), is stunned to see her again.

A truck driver, Mariano regularly travels between Guantanamo and Havana with his partner, Ramon (Pedro Fernandez), and is used to having casual sex along the way. But the handsome, husky Mariano is confronted with the emptiness of his life when he encounters Gina for the first time in several years.

A woman in her 40s, Gina is beautiful but worn; seeing Ramon again has made her look and feel young again. A family friend, Candido (Raul Eguren), traveling with Adolfo and Gina, warns her that he let his own life become “smaller and smaller.” Gina sees a way out with Mariano, but will she take it?

Meanwhile, Adolfo becomes increasingly exasperated with the constant transferring of the casket from hearse to hearse.

Gutierrez Alea and Tabio recall Jean Renoir in their ability to embrace people in their love of nature and with all their flaws. Crucial to “Guantanamera!’s” impact is that the filmmakers are able to view Adolfo, despite his insensitivity and self-absorption, with compassion.

They’re able to see him as a man who has struggled to play by the rules, even if those rules are unjust and ineffective, and as one who is struggling to avoid being crushed by them. Thus, Cruz is able to make the not very sympathetic Adolfo quite human.

Ibarra, Gutierrez Alea’s wife of 22 years and his frequent leading lady, and Perugorria make Gina and Mariano as irresistible as the characters they played so unforgettably in “Strawberry and Chocolate.” Perugorria created in the earlier film one of the most memorable gay characters in world cinema, a man who might be effeminate and at times flamboyant but is of staunch character and principles. Here, Perugorria plays a rugged guy whose macho looks and behavior mask considerable sensitivity.

Ibarra played Perugorria’s next-door neighbor, an endearing former prostitute of much vulnerability. In “Guantanamera!,” Ibarra is portraying a woman of dignity and superior intelligence forced to admit that her life is drying up on her.

We’ve met many Ginas and Marianos in films before this, but the direction, the writing and the acting combine to make them seem extraordinary here. What’s more, the rest of the cast and their roles are up to the standards of the film’s stars.

Funny, rueful, infinitely moving, “Guantanamera!” does not take its leave without a lovely touch of magic realism. And Gutierrez Alea has taken leave of us with a film that has a quality of abundance--of wit, affection and wisdom--that so often seems to have all but vanished from the screen.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film has some nudity, some lovemaking.

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‘Guantanamera!’

Mirtha Ibarra: Gina

Jorge Perugorria: Mariano

Carlos Cruz: Adolfo

Raul Eguren: Candido

A Cinepix Film Properties release. Directors Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Juan Carlos Tabio. Producer Gerardo Herrer. Executive producer Camilo Vives. Screenplay by Eliseo Alberto Diego, Gutierrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabio. Cinematographer Hans Burmann. Editor Carmen Frias. Music Jose Nieto. Art director Onelia Larralde. In Spanish, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.