Guantanamera

The last feature (1994, 104 min.) of late Cuban director Tomas Gutierrez Alea (Memories of Underdevelopment, The Last Supper), codirected by Juan Carlos Tabio and starring Alea’s wife Mirtha Ibarra. This charming and earthy road comedy, about a solution for the gasoline shortage hatched at an undertakers’ convention, fleetingly recalls William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying as well as Luis Buñuel’s Mexican Bus Ride. It’s touching to see Alea, a couple of years before his own death, deal with death as humorously and as unpretentiously as he does here. Check this one out. In Spanish with subtitles.