Con el amor no se juega (1991) User Reviews

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea adapts Gabriel García Márquez

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 27 March 2024]

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea was probably Cuba's most renowned director for decades. Over the years he turned out movies that looked at Cuban history, and the results of the revolution (sometimes looking critically at this). One of his most famous movies was 1994's "Strawberry and Chocolate", about a gay man having to hide his sexual orientation in 1979 Havana.

One of Gutiérrez Alea's lesser known movies was a segment of "Con el amor no se juega" ("Don't Fool with Love" in English), an adaptation of a Gabriel García Márquez novel. It's such an obscure movie that it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. Nonetheless, it's a perceptive look at relationships, whether focusing on a woman who falls for a soldier in a mirror, or on a relationship between a radio host an a listener. Not a great movie, but still clever.

Unusual stories about how love relationships can happen or become true..

[salinasrodolfo · 9/10 · 24 February 2023]

In the second part of the film, entitled "Don't fool with love". This tells the unusual way of coinciding between a radio announcer and one of her radio listeners, from which they find that many of their hobbies and tastes are the same. It is a love story like so many others, in which no one expects to find what they are looking for in the other, but coincidences do exist and sometimes there are many.

En la segunda parte de la cinta titulada "Con el amor no se juega". En esta se relata la forma tan inusual de coincidir de una locutora de radio y uno de sus radioescuchas, a partir de la cual encuentran que muchas de sus aficiones y gustos son los mismos. Es una historia de amor como tantas otras, en la cual nadie espera encontrar lo que busca en el otro, pero las coincidencias existen y a veces son muchas.

Nicolas: "It's all or nothing."

[stephanlinsenhoff · 9/10 · 2 May 2015]

Susana will marry the son of a prominent family in three weeks. With her grandma she bought a mirror which is, returning, put up: "No, grandma, The mirror goes over there. When alone, mirroring herself, she suddenly sees in the mirror a man entering. Taking from a cub board a gun, ready to kill himself. But going towards the mirror he suddenly, looking into the mirror he sees the girl. She rushes downstairs, calling her grandma, telling her that a soldier is about to shoot himself. In the mirror. Grandma, cautious,looks: sees nobody. Only the reflection of the room: "No show, he went away without saying god-by." Scene 2. Night. The soldier tends a lamp to look at the woman on the other side of the mirror. Scene 3. She combs her hair. Two different lamps, her own and in the mirror. With a sheet she hides the mirror. In scene 4 she looks with her fiancé in a book, discovering the mirror man, anti-imperialist army officers who fought under the orders of general Zaragoza in 1862. Scene 5: nervous she wanders back and forth in her room, wondering what is behind the mirror. Pulling away the sheet she reads backward: 'I miss you.' And there he is, asking: "Why have you done this to me?" Three days and nights "... for her heart to soften." Such a strange feeling, between fear and love.

She is frightened: "How can I talk to my own mirror?" But he is no mirror, he is Lieutenant Nicolas de Regulo, son of Lieutenant colonel Blas de Regulo, a member of the honorable Benito Juarez anti-imperialist army, quartered with my battalion in Puebla de Zaragoza, awaiting combat against the invading French." She denies. The mirror she bought is from 1863. Yes, it is this year, he answers.And she: "And this is the year without grace 1990." He surrenders as her prisoner, madly in love with her. Waiting for her each evening. "With a pane of glass between us?" "Worse, with a century between us. ..." After the death of his wife emptiness entered his life, the reason that he wanted to shoot himself. But now: "So voilà mademoiselle, my life is yours." It's like a movie she says, like a fairy tale "I should say." Next scene: she prepares food and wine for two, observed by the worried grandma. "I have a lover, grandma." "A lover before your wedding?" In front-behind the mirror they celebrate: "For the sake of an entrapped love" and she: "For ever and ever" By grandma entering her room, Nicolas quickly hiding, talking of todays wedding rehearsal, Nicolas hears that she is engaged and will marry. Nicolas: "You could have told me." She begs him to return tonight once more. "No, Susana, this is also a war." Next scene: Susana in her wedding dress, Suna like a puppet. They have to hurry. Alfonso waits already at the church.It's like to go for her own execution. She begs them to wait, rushing up the stairs to her room with the mirror: "I'll be back. It won't be a minute." Without seeing him, he packs his things, she talks to him. At least to say good-by. When she writes mirroring the message "I will still be yours", he enters. Talking to him he answers that he is "like in a cage, like some restless savage beast, condemned to seeing you and not having you." He leaves where are no "charmed mirrors that break my heart." She answers thinking of tradition and .... "One must obey one's heart. Nothing else. Love doesn't do that which is possible, love always does the impossible." She will do it, waiting for him in front of the mirror every night for the rest of my life." "No, Susana! It's all or nothing. Come!" Stretching out his arm, she looks, doing the same, pulling her to him through the mirror.

Grandma calls her: "Susana, girl", entering she looks around: before the mirror the flowers.Taking them and going to the mirror, touching it: "My child"

... we hear the sound of a horse. The closing scene: both on horseback, riding towards ...!?