Sueño Tropical

Subject: Oneiric inversion, naturalization and gender inequality in Cuban cinema

Sueño Tropical articulates its proposal through a oneiric device that systematically inverts gender roles in order to make visible what, in everyday life, appears naturalized. Through the protagonist’s dream, the film displaces onto the male body experiences historically associated with women—domestic subordination, the overload of care work, sexual control, harassment in public space and economic dependence—thus constructing a pedagogical dystopia that does not propose an alternative order, but rather exposes, by contrast, the symbolic and material violence sustaining the existing one. Released in 1991, the film avoids a direct critique of the political system and situates the conflict within the realm of gender, implicitly acknowledging one of the major unresolved issues of the revolutionary process: the incomplete transformation of relations between men and women in everyday life, particularly within the domestic and affective sphere.

Technical details

Director

Miguel Torres

Release year

1991

Running time

75 min

Country

Cuba

Cast

Alberto Pujol
Hilda Rabilero
Almi Alonso
Orlando Casin
Daisy Granados
Francisco Gattorno

Producer

Productora Internacional ICAIC

Plot

Synopsis

Adorables mentiras portrays the affective and professional relationships of several characters in late-1980s Cuba, bringing to light double standards, structural machismo, and simulation as everyday strategies of survival. Through deception, silences, and symbolic hierarchies, the film constructs a critical perspective on the gap between social discourse and lived experience.