The Lost City

[Helene]

I'm opening this thread to discuss the movie The Lost City, in which San Francisco Ballet Principal Lorena Feijoo has a featured acting and dancing role. The movie opens today.

[drb]

This is going to be a tough one to be objective about, based on early evaluations that seem strongly associated with the reviewer's political position relative to the Cuban Revolution.

The December, 2004 issue of Dance Magazine had an interview with Ms. Feijoo which discussed her work on the film in the summer of 2004.

...Feijoo performs two numbers: a work on pointe choreographed with her mother, and an Afro-Cuban piece created with the help of modern dancer Neri Torres. And she has an intense backstage scene with Garcia. Among the lines, according to Feijoo, is that she asks, "Are you going to be watching?" and Garcia answers, "Always."

The crew dubbed her the "one-take woman," and the special effects supervisor was thrilled when she wrapped a scene involving an explosion on the first try. Feijoo said screen acting came naturally. "I tend to like story ballets like Giselle and Don Q because of the acting," she said. "

The complete article:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_..._78/ai_n7577363

[dirac]

drb, I just did a terrible thing to your post. I accidentally deleted a huge chunk of it, when all I intended to do was reply! I hit the wrong button. Many, many apologies, and please re-post! :blush:

[dirac]

Thank you for the link, drb and thank you, Helene, for posting the topic. It sounds as if Feijoo is considering seriously a possible career transition.

From the few reviews I have seen, I don’t think the political divide is quite that pronounced. My general impression is that Andy Garcia, a first time director, may have taken on a little more than he could handle. Here is a link to Peter Rainer's review in The Christian Science Monitor, as a sample. The picture isn’t playing in my area yet, but I will try to go.

[scoop]

Here is the New York Times review. Not a very good one, alas, although I'd still like to see the movie. Having lived in South Florida for a while, I do understand the depth of antipathy that the Cuban emigres feel toward Castro -- although I always sensed that Andy Garcia's feelings were more emotional and nostalgic than political. I've been to Cuba several times and found it poignant and magical and tragic and a million other things -- and can only imagine the hold it has on someone who was actually born there.

[dirac]

This movie had completely slipped my mind, I’m afraid, but I happened to spot it at Blockbuster and took it home for a look. It’s always hard to have to knock a project that took decades of dedication to bring to fruition, but I’m sorry to say it’s not very good. If Garcia had entrusted the screenplay to a director with more experience it would have helped, although probably not much. “The Godfather Part II, ” to which “The Lost City” is indebted, did a better job with similar themes.

It isn’t Garcia’s ‘political position,’ such as it is, that’s the problem – in fact, a more definite and articulated stance, pro or con, wouldn’t matter which – might have given the picture some much needed drive and focus. Instead, we get horribly superficial presentations of the personalities and issues involved, along with treasures like the Bill Murray character, a misbegotten writer’s conceit called The Writer, natch, who wanders around in shorts interjecting what I think are intended to be ironic and perceptive insights into Cuban life???

Feijoo doesn’t have much screen time and would have made little impression on this viewer if I hadn’t already been looking for her, but Feijoo bears no responsibility for that. I didn’t much care for the dance number on pointe (sans tights, which looks very unattractive here). Otherwise the nightclub routines are among the movie’s better moments.

[cubanmiamiboy]

I'm opening this thread to discuss the movie The Lost City, in which San Francisco Ballet Principal Lorena Feijoo has a featured acting and dancing role.

With all my respect, I would say that a better product could have been delivered on this project. Personally, i didn't even feel identified with the whole atmosphere of the movie, and although substituing La Habana with San Juan( Puerto Rico) seemed to have been their only way (i assume) to recreate the look of the "lost city", one can always tell that this is the vision of somebody WHO HAS BEEN TOLD how La Habana used to look like, rather than coming from a living experience. Telling the horrible story of exile, family dissolution and dramatic social changes takes a little more researching than what seems to have been done to make this movie...

Hint: The ultra-modern La Habana of 1959 was reather similar to the US culture than to its colonial past from Spain. Those country style-Godfather-look-alike family reunions, with women sewing on rockingchairs ... mmm, not very convincing .