Film: Memories of Underdevelopment (228/250)
First Time/Rewatch: First Time
The nice thing about watching a film without any type of obligations (for me, it's the knowledge that hardly anyone is reading this and I'm not a professional film writer of any kind) is that I can watch it through whatever filter I like and bring whatever I want to that viewing to enhance it for myself. For example, when I watched The Turin Horse, I imagined that the characters were all dead and living in some kind of purgatory, which intrigued the hell out of me. In Memories of Underdevelopment, a story about a wealthy writer who decides to stay in Cuba after his wife and friends flee, I was getting Fellini vibes during my viewing. So, I decided that this character fancied himself a version of Marcello Mastroianni in his own 8 1/2, if only he wasn't stuck in Cuba. So cool, so suave, so aimless. I enjoyed the narrative jumps, the use of stills, and I really enjoyed Daisy Granados as Elena, who reminded me of photographs of my mother as a teenager. I learned a lot about the setting of Cuba at that time, a country in turmoil, and it created an even richer cinematic experience for me. More like this, please!
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