Taglines: Three kids. One night. No return.
Trapped in the nervous desperation of Havana, Raul dreams of escaping to Miami. When accused of assault, his only option is to flee. He begs his best friend, Elio, to abandon everything and help him reach the forbidden land 90 miles across the ocean. Elio’s commitment is tested when he is torn between helping Raul escape and protecting his twin sister, Lila. Brimming with the nervous energy of Havana’s restless youth in the crumbling sun-bleached capital, Una Noche follows one sweltering day, full of hope and fraught with tension, that burns to a shocking climax.
Review for Una Noche (2013)
A bright red sports car, a stripper and knee-length 24-karat gold chains: those accouterments define the sweet life in Miami in the feverish fantasies of Raúl (Dariel Arrechaga), a hotheaded, hormonally overcharged Havana teenager in “Una Noche.” With his best friend, Elio (Javier Núñez Florián), and Elio’s twin sister, Lila (Anailín de la Rúa de la Torre), Raúl hopes to follow countless others and navigate the straits of Florida to America on a homemade raft.
The journey, which they undertake in the movie’s final third, is as perilous as you might expect. The craft, crudely assembled from wood found in a cemetery, is equipped with inner tubes, an untested motor and a GPS. Their provisions consist of food stolen from the restaurant at which Raúl and Elio used to work, supplemented by glucose.
The feature directorial debut of Lucy Mulloy, a New York documentarian, “Una Noche” surges with vitality so palpable that, for its duration, you feel as if you were living in the skins of characters often photographed in such extreme close-up that they seem to be breathing in your face. You feel the sun on their bodies and get goose bumps when they shiver from the cold.
Contemporary Havana, as depicted in the film, is an impoverished, crumbling fleshpot, whose residents eke out a living the best they can, often by prostituting themselves to tourists. It’s also a barter culture; Elio exchanges his bike for the motor. You can have anything you want if you know whom to go to, observes a character. The authorities are constantly on the alert for trouble. We overhear a security guard warning a supervisor, “There’s a citizen talking to a blonde.”
The movie’s first two-thirds are a portrait of the city as experienced by these teenagers, as they frantically (and surreptitiously) prepare to leave. A narrator (Aris Mejias), assuming Lila’s point of view, muses out loud about a city where, in the words of Raúl, the only things to do are sweat and have sex.
Because everything is filtered through a late-teenage consciousness, “Una Noche” is highly sexualized. Raúl, to celebrate his departure, picks up a streetwalker, who, to his chagrin, turns out to be transsexual. Once the three main characters set forth, the stereotypically macho Raúl repeatedly hits on Lila, who is not interested. Complicating matters, the gentle, introspective Elio is secretly in love with the homophobic Raúl.
Raúl has no choice but to flee Havana after attacking and injuring a Western tourist he catches having sex with his mother (María Adelaida Méndez Bonet), a prostitute. Harassing tourists is a serious matter in Havana, and for much of the movie, the police are in relentless pursuit.
Raúl’s father, he has been told, is somewhere in Miami, but no one has heard from him. Elio and Lila are leaving behind a mother seriously weakened by H.I.V. and her faithless, ne’er-do-well husband. Before leaving, Elio manages to scrape up a supply of H.I.V. medication to leave her.
Once they finally push off into the water, they discover that the motor doesn’t work, and they must paddle the entire 100-mile distance. They brave a thunderstorm, and a shark appears. That’s just the beginning of their troubles. But “Una Noche” doesn’t turn into a clichéd survival drama. For all its flaws, the movie, filmed with nonprofessional actors, is steadily gripping.
Una Noche (2013)
Directed by: Lucy Mulloy
Starring: Dariel Arrechaga, Anailín de la Rúa de la Torre, Javier Núñez Florián, María Adelaida Méndez Bonet, Greisy del Valle
Screenplay by: Lucy Mulloy
Production Design by: Laura Huston
Cinematography by: Trevor Forrest, Shlomo Godder
Film Editing by: Cindy Lee
Art Direction by: John Paul Burgess, Yinka Graves
MPAA Rating: None.
Studio: Una Noche Films
Release Date: August 23, 2013
Visits: 47
