THE NEW MAN, UNDER CONSTRUCTION

FRESA Y CHOCOLATE

BY TOMÁS GUTIÉRREZ ALEA
ICAIC, 1993

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (1928-1996) remains the best-known filmmaker to work within Cuba's government-supported film institute, the Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). Gutiérrez Alea made his mark in 1955 with the documentary El Mégano (The Charcoal Worker), which exposed the exploitation of peasants laboring in swamps. Immediately after the success of the revolution in 1959, Gutiérrez Alea and other young filmmakers founded ICAIC.

Although Gutiérrez Alea was a committed supporter of the revolution, his films often critiqued the contradictions of the Castro government’s policies. ,Muerte de un Burócrata (Death of a Bureaucrat) (1966) is a biting satire aimed at the socialist bureaucracy. Memorias del Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment) (1968), considered by most to be the filmmaker’s critical masterpiece, is an examination of the contradictions of the individual within socialist society.

Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate), co-directed with Juan Carlos Tabío, is Gutiérrez Alea’s most commercially successful and award-winning film, within Cuba and internationally. In Fresa (1993), Gutiérrez Alea took aim at the hypocrisy and intolerance he saw as damaging to the Cuban revolutionary ideal.

Set in Havana in 1979, Fresa follows the development of a friendship between David (Vladimir Cruz), a straight young revolutionary, and Diego (Jorge Perugorría), an older gay intellectual. The movie opens with Diego spotting David at an ice cream shop. With the intention of seducing him, Diego initiates a conversation. David’s roommate Miguel encourages him to spy on Diego in order to expose him as a counter-revolutionary.

As the story progresses, David begins to overcome his initial feelings of disgust towards Diego, and is able to develop a real friendship with him. At the end of the film, Diego appeals to a friendly foreign embassy and decides to emigrate, despite his friend’s claims that there is space for him within the revolution. The ending is meant to foreshadow the massive emigration from Cuba about to occur during the 1980 Mariel boatlift.

Contemporary audiences watching Fresa might find the film dated and a bit superficial in its treatment of LGBTQ issues. According to statements made by the directors, it was never meant to be a “gay movie”—rather, the film is about intolerance broadly, homophobia merely standing in as a convenient example.

The film, produced during the economic devastation of Cuba’s post-Soviet “special period,” acts as a plea for tolerance in order to create a stronger, more united national identity. Diego and David are meant to represent two halves of the Cuban nation torn apart by difference, ideological and otherwise. Fresa y Chocolate very much reflects the diálogos (dialogues) that Castro’s government has held with exiles since 1978. If we consider Diego as the émigré he becomes at plot’s end, the film is in effect enacting such a diálogo.

Critical discourse

Due to the broad approach the film takes around intolerance, the film fails to really delve into Cuba’s sexual repression and oppression of its LGBTQ population. The narrative is generally told from a male heterosexual point of view— that of the directors, through David. Accordingly, as the story progresses, Diego goes from being an object of disgust to just a sexless— and therefore sympathetic—figure.

The film trades in stereotypes around Diego’s perceived lack of masculinity and his flamboyance. The title of the film is a play on Diego and David’s encounter at the ice cream shop. David tells Miguel, “I knew he was a homosexual—there was chocolate, and he chose strawberry.” Real (revolutionary) men prefer chocolate, it seems.

Despite its omissions around issues of sexuality and gender, Fresa y Chocolate is valuable as a commentary on how Castro’s Cuba has attempted (and frequently failed) to reckon with histories of exclusion and realities of difference. Fresa also serves, along with films like Improper Conduct and Before Night Falls, as a popular historical document, demonstrating the oppressive realities, as well as pointing to how far Cuba has come in recent years.

While LGBTQ persons are still subject to instances of police harassment and job discrimination, the public discourse around issues of sexuality and gender have greatly improved, especially through the initiatives of the National Center for Sex Education and its director Mariela Castro. Thirty years after the film’s setting and 15 after its release—as Cuba considers new approaches to address LGBTQ rights and inclusion—Fresa y Chocolate, and its absences, continue to provide critical food for thought.