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The news of a millionaire inheritance that the members of the Cuban Castiñeira family will be able to receive, is sufficient cause to disturb the peace of the inhabitants of a small town named Yaragüey in the interior of Cuba.

This is the central plot of the movie El cuerno de la abundancia by recognized Cuban filmmaker Juan Carlos Tabío (Strawberries and Chocolate along with Tomas Gutiérrez Alea), one of the movies, during these days, most sought after by the public at the festival.

In a press conference, writer Arturo Arango, co-scriptwriter of the film along with the director, stressed that the idea of the film, a formula repeated in previous feature films by Tabío such as Lista de espera, emerged from conversations and stories that he heard his mother and neighbors tell in his native town in Manzanillo, located in the eastern region of the island.

“We situated the film in a small town because it worked out more pleasant and better articulated to locate it in a context where similar news causes more intense situations,” so stated Arango.

The movie that had its first world premier in Spain, months back, is made up, almost in its entirety, by a cast of top-rate actors on the island such as Jorge Perugorría, Enrique Molina, Paula Alí, Mirta Ibarra, Laura de la Uz, Alexis Díaz de Villega, Tahimí Alvariño and Raúl Pomares.

According to Tabío, “each one of the characters has a force and an importance in the film, we counted on a series of actors of great prestige, for which we tried to make the most of their presence.”

“We counted also on the participation of actor Vladimir Cruz, an opportunity of which we took advantage so as - together with Perugorria - to wink at Strawberries and Chocolate, as the movie makes clear references to the characters of Diego and David.”

Another of the aspects pointed out about the film is that it’s told in the first person, “nothing new in the history of film,” to which the director of Plaff and El elefante y la bicicleta maintained “in the movie there are some anecdotal elements that are told to the character, many actors taking part, and in the first person the story is a bit summarized, to help give the news of what is happening.”

The meta-language of the movie within the movie, an expressive formula, a characteristic of Tabío’s work, also shows up in El cuerno de la abundancia where the camera plays once more and talks with the spectator.

“Cinema is a collective art where all who take part in it contribute,” were the words of the director when explaining that for him, “the choice of neighborhood is a determining moment, following on from previous desk work, where the focus is on reading the script, and on the dramaturgical analysis of each character.”

“Exhaustive desk work (pre-shooting) is what makes possible that afterwards on the set there is so much freshness.”

To the question of why again he uses comedy as the genre, the director replied “humor can be a capable tool for revealing the keys to life of a certain reality.”

Arango, on his part, emphasized that the movie is not a moral comedy but that the laughter comes accompanied with dramatic moments, reflection, with using and bringing to light universal codes of the workings of human life.

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[User Rating:7.2/10]

Saturday's discovery was a little gem of a film, a bright and breezy romance from Cuba called The Waiting List. Directed by Juan Carlos Tabio, based on a story by Arturo Arango, The Waiting List takes place at a bus station in the middle of Cuba and is filled with characters waiting to go somewhere else. It is a true ensemble character-driven film pulled off with a solid script and firmly keeled direction.

Many of the actors were seen before in Tabio's Strawberries and Chocolate but the characters who congregate at the bus station are unique. In the center are the young lovers played by Vladimir Cruz (an Antonio Bandaras look-alike, but more vulnerable) and Thaimi Alvarino, and they are surrounded by the blind man who isn't, the mother who hedges her bets on everything down to naming her son Vladimir Jesus, the gruff station manager and the ticket seller who sees nothing ironic in 16 people getting off and only one seat now being available, or the comment that follows every announcement of each delay: "Thank you for choosing us for your transportation needs." Needless to say there is no transportation, at least not at this bus station, and as it changes from a run-down stop over to a Rousseau-inspired feast for the eyes through imagination and team work, the best and worst is brought out in each of the characters.

Metaphors for the possibilities and the failures of socialism quaff throughout with good humor and a delicate touch. Even the title (Lista de Espera /The Waiting List) entices with the contradictions ahead in Spanish, Espera means to wait as well as to hope. www.filmscouts.com (Cannes 2000)