Review: Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Reviews

Suite Habana

Close look at one day feels like it lasts about that long, too

By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | May 31, 2006

2.0 Stars

LYRICAL: But Suite Habana is also somnolent

Fernando Pérez’s portrait of ten people in Havana pedals along slowly and entirely without dialogue. It’s a close examination of a single day with numerous perfectly composed shots of quotidian minutiae: cream stirred in a cup of coffee; a button sewed onto white shirt; a sandwich unwrapped and chewed. Occasional images -- a man riding a bicycle with a pair of high heels slung over the handlebars, a woman sitting across from a statue of Jon Lennon in the pouring rain -- add lyricism, and tender moments, like a father making shadow puppets with his son who has Down syndrome, are balanced with quietly devastating ones: an old woman with a deeply sad face eats beans and rice beside a photograph of herself smiling wide at her wedding. The effect of the collage is melancholy, a lost paradise. The crawling pace has a lovely slowness sometimes (which isn’t helped by the tedious piano soundtrack), but ultimately it has a somnifying effect.

| More

ARTICLES BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

ON CARPENTRY AND COLLEGE | October 20, 2011
Age 30, I quit the Phoenix and ended up with a job as an apprentice to a carpenter. Sawing, chiseling, hammering, nail-gunning, tiling, sanding, slotting, framing, hauling, measuring, and sweeping are less obvious outcomes of an undergraduate career in the liberal arts. College, in strange and unexpected ways, prepared me for this sort of work. And in others, did not prepare me at all.

PHDISASTERS | April 27, 2011
I knew a man pursuing a PhD in literature. His dissertation had to do with humor as a form of dissent in 20th-century literature. And how enthused he was at first! How passionate and excited.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE'S THE PALE KING | April 13, 2011
All I can do is tell you how I read the book.

THE HOUSE THAT HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG BUILT | February 25, 2011
Andre Dubus III collected me at the Newburyport train station last month when the snow piles were already high. We stopped first for a coffee for the road; he asked all the questions: siblings, hometown, are you married?

DON'T BE AN IDIOT | January 27, 2011
We're all idiots when we're 18. We're all idiots for the first half of our 20s, and longer, for some. By saying so, we're not trying to insult anyone.