Vamos a la playa (2022) User Reviews

Cuba ...... poor but entirely full of friendly and generous people

[Charlot47 · 9 December 2023]

A wealthy German pays for his daughter and two of her friends to go to Cuba in search of his son, who was researching the vanishing manatee but has himself vanished. The motives of the three differ widely. The boy Benni conscientiously wants to spend all day hunting for one man in an island of 11 million people, but is also consumed with desire for the girl Judith. The third, Katharina, just wants to sleep with all the handsome Cubans she can, by paying them. When the three at last stumble upon the lost son, he is living happily with a poor family who have befriended him and has no desire to return to Germany. Judith impulsively marries a handsome Cuban from an even poorer family and at the wedding Benni at last gets the sex he has been dying for, up against a wall with the ever-ready Katharina.

Hardly a romantic comedy, though set in picturesque locations with lively local music, the film carries a heavy weight in portraying its clash of two worlds. Two of the four Germans are able to overcome the taboos of their own society to find love and friendship in a very different country. The other two remain trapped, as symbolised by their loveless coupling at the end (though there is a possible ray of hope for Benni). Not having been to Cuba, I can't judge whether showing it as poor but entirely full of friendly and generous people is a dramatic device or reality.

Vamos a la confusión

[StolenCompass · 4/10 · 22 December 2023]

There is a scene of a man, surrounded by typically colourful Cuban architecture, on a horse while using his phone - the contrast between worlds of old and new, of tourist eyes (read also of the filmmaker's eyes). It feels authentic, vivid, alive. It is an exception to a film of guidance - a manipulation of feeling within a fascinating culture.

Take for example: Benni, one of the protagonists, who is shown to be calculating. We see him counting the finances of every day. Once more, in case you didn't notice, he is logical, he premeditates everything, he cannot let go. One more time. Let's show them again. The viewer isn't given a chance here to interpret, but is told how a character must be. In case we didn't realise already, we hear once again in the hallway of the hotel how he won't let ago even when drunk.

I would like to focus on what kept me watching: the random conversations with strangers. The essence of the search, for which the viewer is not really invested for nothing, is really explained. There is money...inheritance, and then western guilt at excessive tourism, and it possesses the film like a streetdog with jaws clenched upon the inevitable appearance of a wedding dress.

There are no great revelations in this film, no personal stakes that the characters themselves seem to have worked towards. Instead, it is the hands of the writer, the director, moving the strings of the puppets, and the viewer left to be manipulated or turn off. It is not to say that it is not worth watching. Sometimes I felt the air of Cuba filling our living room. But I longed more for the place rather than the story, which went nowhere and everywhere. I longed for depths of characters far beyond this film. Time to go back to words,