2023-12-15 22:21:36
On the afternoon of this December 15, in the Taganana Room of the Hotel Nacional, the Culture Circle of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC) awarded its prize, corresponding to the 44th edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, to the movie The wild womanby Alan González, according to the analysis of a jury made up of six colleagues from the national press:
The jury of the Culture Circle of the Union of Journalists of Cuba, made up of Sahily Tabares, Isidro Fardales, Nancy Lescaille, Yuris Nórido, Nailei Vecino, Leandris Noa and Lázaro Hernández, awards its prize, as usual, to a Cuban work, which is competing in Havana for the Coral Prize in the 44th edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.
We unanimously agree to award:
For the creative dramaturgical conception developed in a plot where the tragedy genre leads with a happy ending in defense of love and deep social, ethical and cultural connotations in Cuban society.
For the direction of photography, knowing where to place the camera based on the story and the validation of its dramaturgical syntax.
For the harmony and suggestion of the assembly conceived from a solid aesthetic invention.
For the Yolanda of the first actress Lola Amores, who demonstrates her mastery and organic performance by internalizing and externalizing nuances and intentions of her character.
For the artistry of Alan González in selecting and directing his creative team and proposing a creative, suggestive and deeply reflective film as cinematographic art should be.
We present our Award to director Alan González for his film The wild woman.
Sahily Tabares, president of the Upec Culture Circle.
About the film, journalist Sahyli Tabares wrote for Bohemia magazine:
The risky game of real life
An intense dialogue proposes from its artistically recreated content the film The Wild Woman, directed by Alan González, one of the films that is competing in the first film category for the Coral Award, in the 44th edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema
It may happen that existence turns towards cinema, as it appropriates intricate and mysterious emotional dialogues.
Through our own and other people’s stories, in the work of scriptwriters, directors and creative teams, restlessness, anguish, silences, senses of limits, and surprising secrets emerge. They assume dense networks of interpellations of reality from the point of view, artistic truth, and tone, chosen by those who recreate the story on the big screen.
However, sometimes, the synopsis of a film barely touches on its immense investigative power. It happens with the summary of the feature film The Wild Woman recorded in the Festival diary: In a poor neighborhood of Havana, a woman survives a bloody fight between her husband and her lover. In a desperate attempt to save her son from scandal, she decides to run away with him, but a video of the incident has already gone viral.
The fierce examination of what happened shakes through the dramaturgical conception in the script by Nuri Duarte and Alan González, director of the film production. Lucid, tense, the plot delves into facts and circumstances given by strong indications of the marginal.
As a stylet, the linguistic and visual writings reveal the process of mutations of the implicit self in people and masks that accompany them.
Certainly, the tragedy is immeasurable. That kind of baroque of the event is carried out by Lorenzo Casadio, director of photography, and Joanna Montero, in the editing.
Neither of them, nor the director Alan González, exalt damaged buildings, shadows or dirt in the city. This discovery, intentional in some films, is not an opportunistic motive in The Wild Woman. Here the plausibility and readability of stories open to the tragedy of various existences lead.
But, without a doubt, the course of the narrative style is carried forward by a woman-character, Yolanda. That dual, exquisite protagonism is masterfully defended by Lola Amores. Its emotional density embroiders the nuances of learning, and the viewer participates in this process.
Organic in the acting performance, it subtly demarcates each intention. She is aware of her tragic mistake. This does not allow him to turn back, and that error, plus the given circumstances, unleashed the great tragedy.
However, in this film, love saves. And the story concludes with a not-so-tragic happy ending. Yolanda meets her son again. This connection is eloquent in the interpretation of the child Jean Marcos Fraga.
Alan González warns without didacticism what a film can say when it enters dense, deep areas of reality, bringing to light the submerged part of the iceberg.
Cuban films always motivate the interest of diverse audiences.
It addresses problems with social and human connotations, including sexual, psychological, and physical violence.
Without stridency, it exposes the power relations and the nature of the links between victims and their aggressors. Perhaps, we reflect little on how violent people and their actions transform intimate matters into public events. It is urgent to reflect on the significance of an individual phenomenon with social repercussions.
The film expresses manipulations and concealments, these come to light to legitimize male dominance, and the way of exercising and maintaining control.
Its dynamic panorama suggests questions: why does this tragic, harsh, eschatological film seduce the majority? Does your discourse have the possibility of enriching an anthropological and sociological document even when the creators are aware that art behaves as a subjective, incomplete approximation to reality?
Performing The Wild Woman deserves to be a creative exercise. The technical and artistic team dealt with what can happen here and now, suggests clues and ideas, promotes understanding strategies of a narrative aimed at meditating on half-truths, practices of domination and abuse.
Warning about the risky game of real life. And he does it in a sensitive, intelligent way, faithful to cinematographic art.
Yolanda, the protagonist of The Wild Woman.
Colleague Yuris Nórid also wrote about the film for Cubasí:
Like an urban Time.news, with work on sound that reveals as if superimposed layers were fragments of the soundtrack of a city, it unfolds The wild womanthe Cuban film directed by Alan González that opts for the Coral in the debut films section.
It is an arduous story, set in a relative marginality… relative, assuming that it encompasses many Cubans. The rigors of everyday life are recreated in a stark portrait, which does not spare physical and psychological violence, but also does not spare a subtle tenderness, the love that ends up imposing itself, maternal love.
The naturalism of the setting is well assumed by the cast, in a narrative that gradually reveals its logic.
Cover image: In the center, Lola Amores, the protagonist of the film. On the left, the director, Alan González. He is followed by Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, vice president of Upec, members of the jury and Sahyli Tabares, president of the Upec Culture Circle.
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