Director: Tomas Gutierrez Alea
Writers: Edmundo Desnoes, Tomas Gutierrez Alea
Photography: Ramon F. Suarez
Music: Leo Brouwer
Editor: Nelson Rodriguez
Cast: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Nunez, Omar Valdes, Rene de la Cruz, Yolanda Farr, Jack Gelber, Ofelia Gonzalez
Memories of Underdevelopment came out in the globally tumultuous year of 1968, chipping in reports from Cuba less than 10 years after the Revolution. Indeed, the novel by Edmundo Desnoes that it is based on was published only in 1965. It bears a curious and interesting point of view in its main character, Sergio Carmona Mendoyo (Sergio Corrieri), a merchant capitalist who ran a “posh” furniture store he inherited from his father which has been destroyed or taken away by the new regime. Sergio is also owner of rental properties and retains an income stream there. The picture is set in 1961 and 1962. The first scenes show Sergio packing his mother and the rest of his family off to the US. He appears to be dubious about long-term prospects for the Revolution. He is staying and may join his family later. The picture is semi-documentary in style, with archival footage, and follows the suddenly aimless Sergio around, dealing with his girlfriend problems (he is divorced) even as he ponders, in voiceover, the finer points of “underdevelopment.”
His first and most problematic girlfriend is an evident example. “I try to live like a European,” he says. “[Elena] makes me feel underdevelopment with every step.” They are in a bookstore where he is purchasing a copy of Lolita. Elena (Daisy Granados) is scheming to force him into marriage, premised on their having sex, or, as they often say around here, “ruining” her. For his part, Sergio denies deceiving her and doesn’t think she was really a virgin, which of course does not help his situation. Eventually she enlists her brutal brother and parents into making a legal case of it. This situation is appallingly beneath a genteel man who would prefer to spend afternoons at the modern art museum. His allegiance to European culture is as bone-deep as Elena’s family’s is to old-world ways of blood honor and such, next stop clitorectomies. They could be closer to that than we would like to think or maybe Sergio and I are paranoid. It’s a real case of underdevelopment.
Memories of Underdevelopment came out in the globally tumultuous year of 1968, chipping in reports from Cuba less than 10 years after the Revolution. Indeed, the novel by Edmundo Desnoes that it is based on was published only in 1965. It bears a curious and interesting point of view in its main character, Sergio Carmona Mendoyo (Sergio Corrieri), a merchant capitalist who ran a “posh” furniture store he inherited from his father which has been destroyed or taken away by the new regime. Sergio is also owner of rental properties and retains an income stream there. The picture is set in 1961 and 1962. The first scenes show Sergio packing his mother and the rest of his family off to the US. He appears to be dubious about long-term prospects for the Revolution. He is staying and may join his family later. The picture is semi-documentary in style, with archival footage, and follows the suddenly aimless Sergio around, dealing with his girlfriend problems (he is divorced) even as he ponders, in voiceover, the finer points of “underdevelopment.”
His first and most problematic girlfriend is an evident example. “I try to live like a European,” he says. “[Elena] makes me feel underdevelopment with every step.” They are in a bookstore where he is purchasing a copy of Lolita. Elena (Daisy Granados) is scheming to force him into marriage, premised on their having sex, or, as they often say around here, “ruining” her. For his part, Sergio denies deceiving her and doesn’t think she was really a virgin, which of course does not help his situation. Eventually she enlists her brutal brother and parents into making a legal case of it. This situation is appallingly beneath a genteel man who would prefer to spend afternoons at the modern art museum. His allegiance to European culture is as bone-deep as Elena’s family’s is to old-world ways of blood honor and such, next stop clitorectomies. They could be closer to that than we would like to think or maybe Sergio and I are paranoid. It’s a real case of underdevelopment.
Memories of Underdevelopment offers this collision of first world and third. “Underdevelopment” is an ongoing theme all the way—in Cuba, and, in a way that feels extraordinarily like European cinema, in the lives of these characters. There’s even a conference on “Literature and Underdevelopment.” Sergio wanders about Havana in a daze. He’s not at all certain that the Revolution will take. His business is gone. The threat of invasion by the US is constant, all fears proved out in the Bay of Pigs fiasco that year. Sergio stalks history as much as he stalks Havana. The picture starts after the Bay of Pigs and basically finishes on the Missile Crisis.
But Sergio doesn’t care about history. He’s hanging around mostly on the hope that the Revolution will fail and he can recover financially. In retrospect it is denial, but the situation in the moment was fluid and unclear. He says, “My life is like a monstrous and flabby plant with huge leaves and no fruit.” His relationships are like that. Elena is a one-night stand with a fiercely old-world young woman. Some confusions there: 16 is given as Elena’s age (Granados was around 24 or 25 when the picture was made) but she seems to be legally capable of consent. Sex with a minor does not appear to be the problem. “Ruining” her is.
The second girlfriend we hear about, Hanna (Ofelia Gonzalez), is rather more, well, underdeveloped. Perhaps by design—it makes sense to tuck an underdeveloped story into this—or perhaps for reasons related to the ways of independent filmmaking, all we learn about Hanna is that she is the daughter in a family that fled Nazi Germany, landed in Cuba, and then left again after the Revolution, taking Hanna with them. I had a hard time making the math work for a young woman in 1968 so adolescent in appearance but old enough to be alive in Nazi Germany, but I guess I take it as all part of the underdevelopment.
A fair amount of the picture takes place at the Ernest Hemingway museum in Finca Vigia, outside of Havana. The fact that Hemingway is included so prominently speaks for itself. I was braced for the lionizing, but Sergio’s take is refreshingly more cynical and disinclined to heap on the legend. “He was never really interested in Cuba,” Sergio says. “He took refuge here, he entertained his friends, wrote in English and fished in the Gulf Stream.”
Memories of Underdevelopment amounts to an unexpected and unusual but nice portrait of European anomie against the backdrop of the fiery Cuban Revolution. History steps into Sergio’s disaffected lifestyle, which resembles the world of Camus’s Stranger, with the ringing voices of Fidel Castro and John Kennedy in public statements during the Missile Crisis. Talk about the perfect existential moment. October 1962 in Havana Cuba is hard to beat. By the grace of the good universe we had a crew of European cinema vagabonds who could scrape together the resources to address Cuban underdevelopment in this one-of-a-kind picture.
But Sergio doesn’t care about history. He’s hanging around mostly on the hope that the Revolution will fail and he can recover financially. In retrospect it is denial, but the situation in the moment was fluid and unclear. He says, “My life is like a monstrous and flabby plant with huge leaves and no fruit.” His relationships are like that. Elena is a one-night stand with a fiercely old-world young woman. Some confusions there: 16 is given as Elena’s age (Granados was around 24 or 25 when the picture was made) but she seems to be legally capable of consent. Sex with a minor does not appear to be the problem. “Ruining” her is.
The second girlfriend we hear about, Hanna (Ofelia Gonzalez), is rather more, well, underdeveloped. Perhaps by design—it makes sense to tuck an underdeveloped story into this—or perhaps for reasons related to the ways of independent filmmaking, all we learn about Hanna is that she is the daughter in a family that fled Nazi Germany, landed in Cuba, and then left again after the Revolution, taking Hanna with them. I had a hard time making the math work for a young woman in 1968 so adolescent in appearance but old enough to be alive in Nazi Germany, but I guess I take it as all part of the underdevelopment.
A fair amount of the picture takes place at the Ernest Hemingway museum in Finca Vigia, outside of Havana. The fact that Hemingway is included so prominently speaks for itself. I was braced for the lionizing, but Sergio’s take is refreshingly more cynical and disinclined to heap on the legend. “He was never really interested in Cuba,” Sergio says. “He took refuge here, he entertained his friends, wrote in English and fished in the Gulf Stream.”
Memories of Underdevelopment amounts to an unexpected and unusual but nice portrait of European anomie against the backdrop of the fiery Cuban Revolution. History steps into Sergio’s disaffected lifestyle, which resembles the world of Camus’s Stranger, with the ringing voices of Fidel Castro and John Kennedy in public statements during the Missile Crisis. Talk about the perfect existential moment. October 1962 in Havana Cuba is hard to beat. By the grace of the good universe we had a crew of European cinema vagabonds who could scrape together the resources to address Cuban underdevelopment in this one-of-a-kind picture.
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