Alice in Wondertown

In the last 15 years, some remarkable Cuban films were made that criticized aspects of the Cuban society, being "Strawberry and Chocolate" probably the most known of them and people might think it is also the most critical one.

But only "Alicia en el pueblo de maravillas" dares the unthinkable: it puts Fidel Castro and the role of his Comunist Party in the target of the critics. No one else did this before.

I have seen this film full of metaphors at least 3 times. Each time I discover new details. It requires a deep knowledge of the Cuban society and history to unveil the many symbols.

Alicia arrives to the town "Maravillas" (Wonderland) where other people have been sent as a punishment. What have done these other people to be sent there? What do they think about themselves in the new situation and about the possibility of changing something? That's what I think Alicia wants to discover and to tell us during the film, and her story has much to do with a particular perspective of the life in Cuban society, but in the film I did not find the answer to the question: "Why is Alicia telling us this story?"

I find very clever the way the past of the characters and their current life in Maravillas is related and presented in the film. Also the references to the original book by Lewis Carrol are very fine. The transition from the initial hope, to the progressive disenchantment of Alicia is very well played by Thais Valdes. The role played by the children in the story called my attention, children rarely appear in Cuban films.

Finally it is a good experience to see a film that was very polemic, even considered as hypercritical, in Cuba.

A weird spin on "Alice in Wonderland" portrays a woman moving to a small Cuban town to be a drama teacher, only to discover that it's the town to which people get sent as punishment. There's something wrong with everything about the place! I figure that "Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas" was intended as a satire on life in Cuba. Mostly, it comes across as the sort of movie that Terry Gilliam (or Jean-Pierre Jeunet) would have made.

Next year, Tim Burton has his own version of Lewis Carroll's story coming out (starring Anne Hathaway, Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman). I will certainly be eager to see it, but it'll be hard-pressed to attain the bizarre feeling created by this version. I certainly recommend this one. It looks as though one pill does make you small after all...

Seen today it is still a subversive comedy, in which dogmatic and opportunistic bureaucrats are made fun of, with a dictator ruling the town of Maravillas, but it is of course tamed compared to later questioning of Cuban society in films (as "Madagascar", "Guantanamera", "La vida es silbar", "Chamaco", "Nada", "Video de familia", and others). I was living in Cuba (1991) when it opened, in an atmosphere of unrest that was a reflection of changing world affairs that Cubans also wanted to happen in the island. Hard-core Communists rallied against it, they went to the cinemas (probably a few of them for the first time in their lives) to boycott it, and it played only for three days, being replaced by the then-current "Alien" sequel! Knowing Cuba helps a lot to fully enjoy the film, but it still funny, with Reynaldo Miravalles giving one of his usual fine performances as the Maravillas dictator.