Chico & Rita

Chica & Rita is a lovely film with a beautiful, animated aesthetic that, at its most basic level, is a love story. Featuring two Afro-Cubans as the love pairing, the film addresses racial discrimination in Cuba and New York, emphasizes Cuban music and jazz (including appearances of famous jazz artists in the film, such as Charlie Parker, Chano Pozo, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, and Tito Puente, and others), and follows a rather unrealistic love relationship (How exactly do Chico and Rita fall in love after spending one night with each other in Havana?). Regardless of how unrealistically the two fall in love, it's an endearing story where jazz and Cuban music unite to tell the story of Afro-Cubans in New York (and the importance of Afro-Latinos in the development of jazz, particularly "Cu-bop" and other developments, including classics such as "Manteca," the very song Chano Pozo dies in a bar to while Chico and Ramon look on). 

Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel that this is an animated (and Cuban) version of Black Orpheus, with less focus on 'traditional' or 'exotic' aspects of Afro-Cuban culture (although a Santeria scene where Rita dances her gorgeous self off and a presumably Cuban female equivalent to a Haitian houngan appears). Like Black Orpheus, jazz fused with local music plays a large role in this film (Cu-bop, Cuban jazz, and mambo rather than bossa nova feature prominently in this stunning film), and both are fundamentally love stories set in 'exotic' Latin American nations where blacks live 'colorful' lives full of music, passion, and Iberian-American urban architecture (Havana and Rio). They also promote stereotypes of the sensual, tropical mulata, but that's still debateable, given the time differences in the film and the rather openly sexual romantic scenes that often characterize recent adult-oriented films. Either way, there are some rather moving dance scenes, comedy, and open sexuality lacking in most animated features. 

Of course, Chico & Rita is a little different for encompassing New York, Paris, and other US cities, and for directlty addressing racial discrimination (Chano Pozo tells Chico and his friend, Ramon, when they first come to New York from La Habana, about Jim Crow and an Anglo-American refers to Chico as a junglebunny). Oddly enough, white Cuban racism against Afro-Cubans is rendered invisible, save by indirect allusions, but Rita, while inebriated, bravely and perhaps foolishly (for its negative impact on her career as a singer and actress in the US), tells it like it is about how she could perform at elite venues in Las Vegas but could never rent a room at the adjacent hotels. 

In addition, the overwhelming view of Cuba under Fidel is one of an unfree and censored music scene with persistent blackouts. It's hard to read too much into it, but considering how influential Bebo Valdes was to the film and how he left revolutionary Cuba (he recorded several of the songs used in the film and the protagonist, Chico, shares his surname), Fidel's Cuba's accomplishments in racial equality are lost in the overall dismal state of independent music not tied directly to his party. This is not to suggest that Castro's government achieved racial equality (certainly not!), but some of the benefits of post-revolutionary Cuba are lost in this film, which also has the unfortunate tendency of overlooking decades of Cuban history. One scene does include a nice homage of young Afro-Cubans rapping and dancing to hip-hop as the old Chico walks by the bustling Havana street to his old apartment. 

Anyway, I'll cease my rambling here. It's a good film that has a very interesting aesthetic style, lovely music documenting the history of interactions between Cuban and US jazz, and some representation of the world Afro-Cubans lived in during age of mambo, chachacha and bebop. At least we get some Afro-Latinos on the big screen and a celebration of Cuba's musical legacy.