by Antonio Mejías-Rentas
SPANISH ONLY: Language was a major issue for the fi lmmakers of Che, the epic film about the hero of the Cuban Revolution that premiered last week at the Cannes (France) Film Festival.
“You can’t make a film with any level of credibility in this case unless it’s in Spanish,” director Steven Soderbergh said at the screening of the four-hour plus film. “I hope we’re reaching a time where you go make a movie in another culture, that you shoot in the language of that culture. I’m hoping the days of that sort of specific brand of cultural imperialism have ended.”
But shooting in the language of the culture of Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a major challenge for the fi lm’s star, Benicio del Toro. The Oscar-winning actor (for Soderbergh’s Traffic) told reporters at Cannes that he speaks “a Puerto Rican Spanish which is very different” to Guevara’s, who was Argentine. He also said his Spanish is at the level of a 1 3-year-old, the age at which he left his native Puerto Rico, and that Guevara was a very educated man. It was more complicated than what it seemed,- del Toro explained in English.
Most entirely in Spanish, the film will be a challenge for U.S. audiences, who mostly dislike subtitles. Although Che competed as one entry for the festival’s top prize, it was shot as two separate films and will likely be released as El argentino and Guerrillero. The film has yet to find a distributor.
REALITY CHECK: Latino finalists failed to take the top prizes last week on TV’s most watched competitions. Chilean actor Cristian de la Fuente, who was among three Dancing With the Stars finalists despite an injury, ended in third place on the ABC reality show. The sixth-season finale of Dancing With the Stars aired May 20 with ice skater Kristi Yamaguchi winning top prize. More surprisingly, expected winner David Archuleta failed to get enough votes to win at the American Idol final that aired on Fox on May 21. The Utah-born teen of Honduran heritage was bested by singer David Cook in the highly rated show.
ONE LINERS: Eva Longoria Parker will return as host and producer of the NCLR Alma Awards, which will be taped in Los Angeles on Aug. 17 and air on ABC on Sept. 12; submissions in film and Tv categories will be accepted through June 6 and nominees will be announced July 8. Actor Tommy Lee Jones said in Cannes that he will shoot his second film as a director in Puerto Rico, an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s short story Islands in the Stream, which will star Morgan Freeman and John Goodman.
Eight years after his death, a bust of Puerto Rican timbalero Ernesto “Tito~ Puente will be unveiled May 30 at San Juan’s Plaza de los Salseros and Venezuela’s Youth Orchestras system has won Spain’s Principe Asturias prize in the arts. Hispanic Link.
