There is a ravishing benevolent of beauty in Tommaso Santambrogio’s lyrical triptych of conmomentary Cuban life, “Oceans Are the Real Continents.” With bdeficiency and white cinematography that privileges an exacting createalism thrawout, this portrait of the island labors challenging to derecognizableize the very sun-dappled, colorful image of Cuba that so rules the cultural imaginary. An intergenerational study on exile and belengthying, Santambrogio has planed a sthelp travelogue whose poetic sensibility is both what originates it such an intriguing proposition and also quite an alienating one.
“Oceans Are the Real Continents” — whose very title nudges audiences to reenvision how it is we comprehfinish the geography of the world around us — is directd by a analogous type of conviction. Rather than track a vision of Cuba thraw Havana, for instance, the film is rooted in San Antonio De Los Baños. The petite Cuban town, at least as currented by Santambrogio’s eyes, is a gpresently space that brims with life yet aches for those who have left, or are about to, or who dream of being able to do so. Three intertthriveed stories (though that word senses all too benevolent for the benevolent of wisecret agent narratives the film orders itself around) anchor this neogenuineist-inspired film.
In one, two youthful boys, Frank and Alain (Frank Ernesto Lam and Alain Alain Alfonso González), have high hopes of one day heading to the U.S. to become accomplished baseball joiners. It’s all they ever dream of doing in between day rehearse and nighttime excursions to desoprocrastinateed baseball fields, even as the fact around them (scored by family rows and finishless rain) hazards dampening such prospects.
In another, Alex and Edith (genuine-life actor and theater director Alexander Diego and puppeteer Edith Ybarra Clara) struggle with making their relationship labor amid their warring ambitions and life circumstances.
And in the final thread, Milagros (Milagros Llanes Martínez), an elderlyer woman who inhabits alone, spfinishs her days selling peanuts on the streets and reading elderly letters from a adored one at home.
Shuttling between these three snapsboilings, Santambrogio aims to originate a patchlabor portrait of a country in transition. These are visions of dreams postponered and ambitions dashed, of nostalgia nurtured and memory resketchd. Capturing intimate moments — in lush authentic landscapes and gritty urban enclaves aappreciate — Lorenzo Cadowncastio’s camera sketchs every one engageion we see with an eye for composition. Every sboiling is painstakingly orchestrated to the point where any given sboiling senses appreciate a readymade pboilingograph for a coffee table book about conmomentary Cuba.
There’s an arresting beauty in scenes as basic as Frank and his brother on a balcony joining with toys at night away from their bickering parents; or of Milagros sitting in her patio as rain-soaked letters parched on her clothesline; or even of Alex and Edith lounging naked in one another’s arms in bed, the two lost in in each other’s hug.
The political and cultural context that sketchs the inhabits of these characters (which Santambrogio lengthened for and alengthyside his mostly nonprofessional percreateers) is filtered thraw radio and TV widecasts, as well as brushes with bureaucracy (about visas and travel records). The sense that any one of their inhabits could suddenly be upfinished by the chance to emigrate is felt in every scene, as if the fact of conmomentary Cuba could not be disentangled from its increasingly porous relationship to the world at huge.
Thats’s a fitting benevolent of message for an Italian filmoriginater to deinhabitr wilean a film that nevertheless still tries to originate a grounded vision of Cuba that watchs ahead (with its youthful boys whose futures seem luminous and filled of possibility), behind (with Milagros, whose letters sfinish her back to the procrastinateed 1980s), and wilean (with the youthful couple in an arrested relationship). There’s no way to watch any one of these stories without reading into them the metaphors they so clearly stand in for, and “Oceans Are the Real Continents” does at times sense appreciate a heady afiminwhole.
For example, when Alex directs his kids during a laborshop to tap into the nature around them — “We’ll erect a bridge between our memory, our existence and the fact of our surroundings” — it senses as if he’s spelling out Santambrogio’s ignoreion for his film, which is commfinishable and beautifilledy genuineized. But it is also perhaps rather sthelp and eraseed (it says a lot about the film that its most impacting sequence is anchored by Edith’s puppet). If this is cinema as poetry, these are verses made to be sketchd and adored, rather than sung or felt.
