The network cuban: promising, but half-succeeded ** 1/2

René González (Edgar Ramirez) defected to the United States by flying an airplane, leaving behind his wife Olga and his daughter in <em>The network of cuban</em>.

24 June 2020

Updated on June 26, 2020 at 4h02

The network cuban: promising, but half-succeeded ** 1/2

Eric Moreault

The Sun

CRITICAL / distribution tempting (Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz, Gael García Bernal), a topic intriguing based on a true story (spies cubans in the United States) and Olivier Assayas : everything was set up for The network of cuban (Wasp Network) we bank at our headquarters. Unfortunately, this is confusing and messy.

With such displays, one can understand the presence of the feature film in competition at the latest Venice film Festival. Which reinforced expectations…

The network cuba began in 1990, in Havana, when the pilot René González (Ramirez) defected to the United States by flying an airplane, leaving behind his wife Olga (Cruz) and her daughter. The latter, a castro convinced the sees as a traitor to his country — not to speak of the injury of self-esteem…

The film lingers next to Juan Pablo Roque (Wagner Moura), a cuban pilot who joined the swim the (infamous) naval base of Guantanamo.

The two men parted, met in Miami where they attend the activities of the major groups of cuban exiles seeking to re-establish democracy on the island (but who are not afraid to soak in the trafficking of arms and drugs).

González is a proud patriot, faithful to his wife, so that Castling does not take long to seduce the beautiful Ana (Ana de Armas, seen in Blade Runner 2049) while eating several racks to enrich themselves. But they have in common the fact of being spies cubans to infiltrate the exiles, under the coordination of Gerardo Hernández (Bernal).

The network of cuban returns on an episode little known of the cold War that Assayas has dotted segments from the archives of Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro. The interview of the latter, which denounces the tolerance implied by the United States to the terrorist activities of the exiles in Cuba (notably the bomb attacks in the tourist hotels), summarizes in a few words the position that develops at length the director.

Le réseau cubain: prometteur, mais à moitié réussi ** 1/2

Gael García Bernal and Penelope Cruz in The network cuban.

Netflix

Olivier Assayas book usually movies enigmatic, clever use of ellipses to advance his narrative by leaps and bounds and sometimes surprising. The jumps in time are used here in the classical way and it is abuse, what helps to make the sequence of events hardly intelligible. True that it has to condense 18 years into two hours.

The multiplication of characters, and the back and forth between them, night also to the understanding. The director of Sils Maria (2014) and Double lives (2018) addresses are usually staged as a game that is both poetic and intellectual.

Approach that should be difficult to a film of spies ! But he was however loaned to the exercise of a more convincing with Carlos (2010), about the terrorist of the same name, (with Ramirez in the title role).

This time, the filmmaker seemed to be struggling more to screen-writing its adaptation of the book The last soldiers of the cold war by Fernando Morais. It multiplies the conversations of restaurants between the spies, which eventually become repetitive.

Some of the scenes are domestic, and sometimes a little racoleuses, are clearly superfluous. It has been long understood to what point the love of Rene for Olga and her children is unwavering. And that it acts as a narrative link in a film curiously devoid of a true emotional charge, in spite of its actors, all very good.

Damage.

The network cuba is available on Netflix.