We Are Losing All Our Values: An Interview with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Michael Chanan: Titón, when I saw your film, Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry and chocolate), I left the theater thinking, among other things, that in a way, this film is a response to Néstor Almendros's documentary Conducta impropia (Improper conduct), which deals with the repression of homosexuals in Cuba. I think so, because, first, when you started in cinema at the end of the forties, you produced several shorts in 8-mm format with him, and, second, because it seems to me that in many of your films, underlying the explicit theme is a certain type of dialogue as much with some key ideas as with other filmmakers.

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea: Actually, it wasn't a preconceived dialogue, but, perhaps there is something to what you say. While I was preparing the film, I learned of Néstor's death, and it affected me a great deal; I was in quite a dramatic situation myself at the time, because I had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was given a very poor prognosis. Then, with the film having as its theme a homosexual in Cuba, well, inevitably, I had to link it to what Néstor had done. So, yes, in a certain way, Fresa y chocolate is an answer to Conducta impropia.

MC: How do you judge Conducta impropia as a representation of the problem of homosexual repression?

TGA: It's a documentary I would never have expected from Néstor, not because of its theme but rather because of the way in which it's presented. I think it's too overdrawn, too schematic, too simplified a version of reality, too manipulative. I mean, Conducta impropia, for me, is everything negative you could associate with socialist realism, but inverted. In my opinion, it was not interesting as a documentary; some of the testimonies it presented that are true were interesting; others, on the other hand, seemed absolutely exaggerated to me. Of course, I was conscious of the fact that homosexuals faced repression in Cuba, as when they were imprisoned in work camps.

MC: Wasn't that at the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies?

TGA: I don't remember the exact time, but I believe it was then, yes. In any case, it was a scandalous situation, so much so that the policy was ended abruptly when voices were raised in protest. But it's no less true that the repression and discrimination homosexuals have been subjected to in Cuba continued for many years. Even today, it's still there at the social level—I won't say the official level, but at the social and individual levels. The macho tradition of our country, as in many other, especially Latin American, countries, is very strong, and the rejection of homosexuals is visible in all of them. Therefore, I don't want to say that the testimonies Néstor collected were lies. The events related in Conducta impropia are almost all true, but only a part of the story is told, and it is not told in context. The real measure of these events is not given; instead, Néstor simply stated that there was repression. What he did seemed too simplistic to me, something that was not at the level of his talent. After all, it's with half-truths that you can make big lies, and, in my opinion, this is what he did.

MC: Did you two have a difference of opinion?

TGA: Yes, and as a result, we stopped talking to each other. Up to that point, even with him being in exile, I had seen him on two or three occasions. I had seen him in Cannes, I had been in his house in New York, we had spoken on the phone in Paris . . . But when he made that documentary, it really seemed to me...