Bitter Sugar

"Bitter" doesn't begin to describe director Leon Ichaso's rage against the Castro regime. Set in Havana, this impassioned drama charts the ill-fated love affair between Gustavo, a true believer, and Yolanda, a disenchanted dancer. "Better we don't discuss politics," she tells him on their first date. But Gustavo is in for a rude awakening: his brother, a rock musician, injects himself with the AIDS virus to protest police harassment; his father, a psychiatrist, makes better money playing piano for tips in a tourist-only hotel; and Gustavo's promised scholarship to study abroad is denied him. On top of all that, Yolanda yearns to emigrate to Miami. "Open your eyes, my love," she tells him. He does, and one of Castro's "New Men" is driven to become "a traitor to the fatherland" with inevitably fatal consequences. Actors Rene Lavan and Mayte Vilan are indeed model Cubans (they're gorgeous!), which really stacks the deck in this sometimes heavy-handed but nevertheless palpable polemic. Recommended. (K. Lee Benson)