By Lida Prypchan
“Comedy, such a great thing, amusing entertainment to occupy the time of idle people that diverts thoughts from offensive sadness.” Lope de Vega.
Dedicated to those who have the capacity for change.
Venezuela is a despondent and pessimistic country, but it is not sad. This despondency and pessimism lead it to indifference, and the unavoidable things this brings with it. It is a despondency that borders on Kafkaesque: carrying out maneuvers, a few effective and many ineffective, all for nothing, because the goal is unattainable and impossible. For this reason, the daily life of Venezuelans consists of quickly moving towards an unreachable goal. Venezuelans have become skeptical and their jocular nature has the irony and disillusionment that are characteristic of skepticism. When he feels desperate upon seeing what is happening, he begins to complain, to give advice, to want to get out of the lethargy he is living in. But it is an inconstant effort, because he is paralyzed when he confronts the small group, the ring that controls and decides everything, not for the good of the country, but instead based on what is convenient for them, or simply for indulgences that they had stopped indulging in in the past.
Adios, Miami speaks with sadness about the Venezuelan idiosyncrasy. It is a sad reality which makes us laugh. What happens, then, is what I told you at the beginning: it is preferable to laugh because nobody can fix this; fixing it would require an internal change within those who govern and those who are governed, a complete change.
Gustavo Rodríguez, Tatiana Capote, and Alicia Plaza star in Adiós Miami. It is produced by Reinaldo de Los Llanos and directed by Antonio Llerandi. G. Rodríguez’s acting is very good. Tatiana did not have to act; she had to be herself in order for her role in the movie to be a success. With Tatiana, it is the same case as what happened with Maira Alejandra. Neither of them is good at acting in soap operas; they simple do not fit in. However, in a movie that asks them to act just as they are, everything comes out extraordinarily well. Maira Alejandra was great in Carmen la que contaba con 16 años [Carmen, the Sixteen-Year-Old], just as Tatiana is great now in Adiós Miami.
This movie represents a complete shift in the subject of Venezuelan cinema…and it’s about time! Venezuelan cinema had become boring by sticking to the subjects of delinquency and prostitution.
In the movie, Gustavo Rodríguez is a man who manages and bases his life on the business endeavors of his wife’s father. He boasts about working all day, when in reality he is wasting money on strange businesses, women, and alcohol. He demands a righteousness from his children that he himself does not possess or know how to pretend to: he is a moralist. He is married to a woman whose second home is the hairdresser’s. He is a man, like many vernacular local men living in this country who believe that virility consists of sleeping with several women in one day. He is a man who buys an apartment for a Cuban woman simply because she shows him her breasts.
He also demonstrates Venezuelan arrogance and the excessive importance they give to what people think about them. I am referring to a scene at the racetrack, where they are auctioning a horse. When they reach five hundred thousand, Gustavo Rodríguez raises his hand to say hello his partner from far away, and the auctioneer interprets this as accepting to pay the large sum for the horse. G.R. approaches the auctioneer and tells him there was a misunderstanding, and that he does not want the horse. The auctioneer criticizes him as irresponsible, until he ends up buying it. His partner asks him how he could buy the horse, given his bad financial situation, to which G. Rodríguez replies, “I bought it so that guy doesn’t think or treat me like I’m broke.”
G. Rodríguez has a romance with Tatiana, the typical superficial actress that not only enjoys the easy life but also doesn’t care about anything, so long as she gets public attention. Together, they go to Miami, where they get tired of wasting money. One day, G. Rodríguez calls his father-in-law in Venezuela, and he finds out that his partner is in jail and that they are looking for him. Tatiana sees this situation as strange, and leaves without notifying him of her departure. In Miami, G.R. spent more money than he had brought with him, and there they do not accept Venezuelan credit cards (could it be that we have a bad reputation abroad?). To avoid going to jail for a scam he was part of, he does not want to return to Venezuela. He remains in Miami, miserable; it is difficult for him to find work, and he feels that, at some point, the police are going to find him. Tired of wandering around, stealing food, and living in hiding, the police find him lying face down on the shore of a beach; G.R. flips over and passes himself off as a Cuban. It ends there. It is a sad ending, an ending that expresses an incapacity for change. It expresses that not even the serious problems that he had to face caused him to reflect. It expresses that there is no solution, that Venezuelans will always use the same strategies to get out of a jam.
Venezuela is a despondent and pessimistic country, but it is not sad, because the person who gets depressed suffers as a result of their exaggerated self-criticism; Venezuela does not need the exaggerated self-criticism of depressed people, although it could use a little of it.
Goodbye, my despondent friends!
