Time on His Side

Turnley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, shot La Tropical in black and white. With a realist eye that looks unflinchingly yet unsensationally at social decadence in Havana, he casts a bare-bulb light on a dancing woman with her dress riding up around her hips, flashing her panties; afternoon bar patrons guzzling rum from a bottle; a boozy man in a broken-down car in the Tropical parking lot woodenly praising Fidel for the camera, and many others. There are moving, simply beautiful scenes here too -- notably of a young dancer practicing alone in his modest bedroom in his mother's concrete-block house; a singer of raunchy timba songs spontaneously crooning an old bolero to the beat of his hands on a table; a santera's funeral service in which mourners send off the spirit with laughter. In its best moments La Tropical evokes the whirlpool of emotions experienced during a typical day in the life of Havana.

But the film attempts to cover too much ground. At its core are enlightening observations about class differences and racial strife in Cuba, rooted in the Salón Rosado's beginnings as a dance hall for the black workers at the Tropical beer company. (The company's lush beer garden, a few blocks away, was reserved for the Spanish executives and those of their class.) Turnley overextends himself, however, trying to touch on too many related -- and unrelated -- issues to let the film flow. Each of the central character's stories seemed "ripped from the headlines," and some points forced. The problems with the treatment of music is indicative of the documentary, in which there are too many brief encounters, self-conscious performances for the camera, and throwaway scenes in bars or at the beach that serve only to weaken the narrative.

La Tropical is thankfully devoid of nostalgic or exotic overtones, although the black-and-white photography, raw and artful as it is, brings an unfortunate pathos to a place in reality characterized by vivid colors. (Cubans who adhere to Santería do not wear black; colors have symbolic meaning for followers of the religion.) But there is a true sensitivity evident in the making of this film, attesting to Turnley's twenty-year career as a celebrated photojournalist. His still photographs of Havana flash onscreen for several minutes in the middle of La Tropical. These photographic portraits and street scenes, superb vignettes of Cuban life, have the focus the film lacks. -- Judy Cantor

Exploitation maven Doris Wishman, auteur of dozens of "nudie" and "roughie" films from the Sixties and Seventies, including 1975's Satan Was a Lady, makes a comeback of sorts with 2001's Satan Was a Lady, a deliberately cheesy tale of tawdry sex and blackmail. Wishman, an octogenarian who is credited by some as the most prolific female director ever, has garnered a cult following for her films, with titles such as Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls, Blaze Starr Goes Wild, and Dildo Heaven. Despite their titles these films are mostly not pornographic, avoiding explicit sex but always displaying plenty of top-heavy females in frequent dishabille. Such is the case with Satan, which features the curvaceous Honey Lauren as Cleo Irane, a money-hungry dominatrix hooker who blackmails her wealthy male client more than once in the tortured, silly story line. Cleo also has problems with her boyfriend, Ed, a louche layabout played by Glyn Styler, a New Orleans singer/songwriter who adds his crooning tunes of heartache to supplement the plot.

Production values are amateurish, as are most of the performances, though Lauren, a Hollywood veteran, gives some credibility to the film despite spending most of it taking off or putting on some of the ugliest lingerie seen in recent memory. Styler, with a mid-Sixties mod mop of hair combed forward over ever-present sunglasses, isn't an actor exactly, but his persona and songs are so tongue-in-cheek, he fits the mood rather well.

As a director Wishman demonstrates a what-the-hell attitude about basics such as continuity, pace, and composition. But say what you will, there's a certain personal signature on this picture, with a look and feel that seem right out of Wishman's movies from four decades ago. This will not please most filmgoers, but cultists can at least appreciate its individuality. That's something most films lack nowadays. -- Ronald Mangravite