With the lifting of the embargo between the United States and Cuba, the film industry is rushing to capitalize on the island’s forbidden allure. The early results are dispiriting, indicating that Hollywood can only imagine this unique culture to be another exotic backdrop to show the dramas of Americans abroad. Far less heralded and far more exciting than the Hollywood products is the independent Sin Alas (Without Wings). While two Americans, writer/director Ben Chace and ascendant indie cinematographer Sean Price Williams, spearhead the film, the rest of the cast and crew is Cuban and the Spanish-language film celebrates and channels Cuban culture rather than trying to homogenize it for American audiences. The result is a lush, dreamlike evocation of Cuban life and a touching meditation on a melancholy memory of lost love.
Based on a story by Borges, Sin Alas centers on a characteristically slippery combination of memory and dream. Aging Luis (Carlos Padron) is flipping through the newspaper one day when he sees a piece on the death of Isabela, a ballerina with whom he shared a short but sweet affair in the late 60s that still haunts him. Later while sleeping, he dreams of a fragment of a melody to which Isabela once danced and upon waking finds he can’t shake it from his head. His chatty and endearing friend Olivio (Mario Limonta) convinces him he needs to discover the tune’s name and hear it in its entirety and the two set out, guitar in hand, to play the song in the streets until it’s recognized. Oblique flashbacks tell the story of Luis and Isabela’s tender but doomed (she was married to an intimidating military man) affair in the early days of the revolution and also to Luis’ bourgeois childhood in the provinces. Simultaneous to Luis’ search, a drama unfolds amongst his neighbors, a young couple kept apart by the wife’s disapproving, live-in grandmother, that Luis empathizes with and helps.
Sin Alas’s dreamy look back from old age to a glamorous lost love sometimes recalls Miguel Gomes’ Tabu, but the approach is less formalist and more freewheeling. As in Heaven Knows What, Williams employs a fluid, immersive handheld style perfectly suited to the animated street life Luis travels through and the gritty 16mm film used. While primarily using close ups, the film integrates insert shots of the beautifully decaying Havana architecture and splashes of sound and movement, while the flashbacks distinguish themselves through a more glamorous and sedate style. Sin Alas is never heavy-handed in its presentation of Cuban life or politics, the latter of which inevitably lurks in the background but only as a force shaping the passions and possibilities of the characters.
Sin Alas, with its Cuban setting and elderly protagonist, is transporting in its depiction of a non-digital life lived by different rhythms. Lyrical and visually beautiful, Sin Alas is not only a wonderful film, but also a wonderful example of American filmmaking talent going abroad to respectfully integrate foreign influences and make a film that could truly be made nowhere else.
