Marlie, a dutiful assistant who dreams of being the theater's next great actor, struggles to wrangle a flamboyant cast of characters for a closing performance of Las Amargas Lagrimas de Petra von Kant, their adaptation of Fassbinder's German text. Dealing with Margo, the theater's volatile director, is always challenging, but it's critically so when Marlie has to tell her that the main electric panel has collapsed just two hours before show and she had to call the only electrician who could fix the archaic apparatus: Frank, Margo's ex-husband.
The first gay-themed film produced in Cuba by the Institute of Cinema since Strawberry & Chocolate in 1993. The theme, however, is the same as in Guttiérerez and Tabìo's film: homophobia, machismo and fear. The fatal attraction between Alfredo, a doctor in the merchant navy, and handsome Carlos starts in a rundown Havana bar and ends at the sailor's house. But Alfredo's flirting and seducing of Carlos immediately turns into something complicated, ambiguous, dangerous. In a claustrophobic, tense atmosphere, their bodies are powerfully attracted, and the words, though violent, intensify the level of sensuality. Does each man kill the thing he loves? Evoking dreamlike atmospheres and characters, 80-year-old veteran director Enrique Pineda Barnet openly references Fassbinder's Querelle and Jean Genet. Quite controversial in its approach, the films demonstrates the milder attitude of Raul Castro's regime towards Cuba's LGBT Community.
