EL PREMIO FLACO
Cuba, 2008, 90 minutes, Colour.
Rosa Vasconcelos.
Directed by Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti and Iraida Malberti.
El Premio Flacco is set in 1958, not long before the Cuban Revolution. The focus is on a middle-aged woman, Illuminada (Rosa Vasconcelos) who works with her husband in the circus as a clown. She lives in a poor neighbourhood but has friends in neighbouring houses. Her sister, who works as a prostitute away from the town, returns home. Everything seems normal, if precarious. Illuminada’s husband is epileptic and has a fit but everybody joins in to help him.
The film focuses, with paintings and photos from the time behind the credits in the stylised format, on television commercials for soap. Suddenly Illuminada wins a raffle and wins a house. She is overjoyed, the film spends a lot of time focusing on the television interview and the neighbours watching. In the event, Illuminada starts to give away her furniture and various goods to the neighbours. A woman with five children has nowhere to live and Illuminada invites them to stay in her home.
The film is quite farcical in its melodramatic presentation of the characters and their interactions. The film is based on a plan, with the screenplay written by the author of the theatre piece, Hector Quintero.
When Illuminada moves to her new house in the countryside, rebels and the Cuban air force start to bomb various locations and the house is destroyed. Illuminada returns with her few possessions, especially her statue, to the neighbourhood.
The film then turns into a melodramatic, highly melodramatic, version of King Lear. The woman with the five children is vicious and will not allow Illuminada back into the house. Even the tent outside is now housing the dog. Illuminada’s sister returns with her gangster boyfriend, revealing that she is married to him, and that she is going abroad to continue her money-making occupation. The neighbours all turn on Illuminada and will not return any of the gifts that she gave them.
It begins to storm, as in King Lear. The performances are over the top at this particular stage, people shouting viciously at one another. Eventually, the police take Illuminada away.
Her husband has been vicious to her also in the past, and he stands idly by while the neighbours abuse his wife. Eventually she has to return to the circus, as a clown playing the trumpet, something which she did in the past and she thought she had left behind.
At the end, dressed as a clown, sounding the trumpet, the people of the neighbourhood all gather round to enjoy the circus and laugh at her. The final sequence is her leading a group away – but a focus on a young man and one of the vicious neighbours’ daughters who are sympathetic to her. She says that she hopes to find a person of good faith – and the young man has kind eyes. The revolution was soon to take place.
The film also has echoes of the Book of Job – and with Illuminada as a clown, memories of Gelsomina in Fellini’s La Strada.
The film may be too melodramatic for Cuban audiences, highly emotional. This means that audiences who do not have a Hispanic heritage may find the film too much to take.
