by John Villeneuve
Either Cuba’s submission to the Academy is a practical joke by some merry pranksters, or there is some hidden meaning, or implications, in this car-crash that has eluded me. Whatever the scenario may be, Fallen Gods (Los dioses rotos) is one of the strangest and most bewildering lumps of coal I have ever seen offered for consideration in the Best Foreign Film category.
The movie opens with an unbearably long-winded exposition about real-life, Cuban pimp, Alberto Yarini Ponce de Leon, who, in 1910, became the most prominent procurer after taking power away from the French imperialists who controlled the prostitution world that existed in San Isidro. Yarini’s assassination by a feuding French pimp led to a “flying war”, and, ultimately, to French expulsion, while Yarini became legendary as the man who “restored Cuba’s manhood” (there’s a head-scratcher for you).
Fast-forward to present day Havana where things are brewing between Rosendo, San Isidro’s reigning pimp, and Alberto, a gigolo who has just returned home from French exile with ambition in his heart, and passion in his soul (you should know that I cannot stop laughing as I am writing this). What follows is a cock-fight between these two brainless lions, each competing to see who can out urinate the other, and, thus, stake control of the jungle. To state the obvious, there is a lot of women, or lionesses, in these two characters’ lives. But the main ones are Laura, a fiery woman researching the mythic status of Yarini for her doctoral dissertation; Rosa, a recently widowed, fiery ladder-climber who has inherited all of her husband’s Mexican companies; Isabel, a fiery, and boozy, middle-aged professor turned writer whose books glorify pimpdom; and, Sandra, a fiery prostitute just released from jail who was once the great love of Alberto, and, now, Rosendo’s main squeeze . Can you feel the heat?
Stylistically speaking, Fallen Gods is one of the most schizophrenic films I have ever witnessed, and, yet, lived to tell the tale. Initially, it starts off as a kind of documentary as Laura interviews assorted prostitutes, transsexuals and pimps for her thesis (by the way, “thesis” is a word that should never find it’s way into a swamp like this). But cin?©ma-v?©rit?© is soon tossed overboard, along with any sense of credibility. What follows is a creaky homage to the French New Wave, complete with jump-cuts, hand-held camera, freeze-frames and blurry images, not to mention the dizzying and iconoclastic characterizations, ?† la Godard’s, Breathless, or Truffaut’s, Shoot the Piano Player. But improvisation and satire is, apparently, not the aim of this film, either. Because before you can say “all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”, the film plummets into soap opery kitch, replete with zoom-outs from concerned eyes, endless close-ups of exaggerated facial expressions, and, of course, fuschia lip and nail colored cat fights.
And the dialogue! Well check out this mouth-watering exchange between Sandra and Alberto:
“Why did you come back?”
“Because Paris without you tastes like shit.”
Then, cut to an extremely graphic sex scene of Sandra and Alberto fornicating as though it were their last day on earth. Did I mention that Alberto shags all of the women in this movie? You can see where this is going. In fact the opening rhetoric tells the whole story, so why the director, Ernesto Daranas, felt the need to repeat the oft told narrative is a mystery. Not to mention, laughable, since this crud makes melodrama seem like Chekhov. But, who knows? Maybe the Academy will be game for a tawdry and confused exercise in machismo and myth-making. If so, I suggest a healthy dose of viagra and porn beforehand, to get into the mood.
