Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau | Mila Caos / 2011

anticipation

by Douglas Messerli

 

Fabián Suarez and Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau (screenplay), Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau (director) Mila Caos / 2011 [18 minutes]

 

17-year-old Cuban teenager Sebastián (Yaniel Castillo) waits for a small jitney to pick him up on weekends, taking him off to an illegal drag show in the suburbs of Havana. There he has transformed from a poverty-stricken high-school boy into a beautiful femme fatale, a favorite of the patrons and his older fellow drag queens.

      It’s a dangerous form of entertainment, with regular police raids, which happens before we can even see his alter ego, Mila Caos’ performance. On the way to the station after their arrestment, accompanied by police in the van, the older drag queens describe their sexual encounters with the cops, proclaiming they are all sissies once they get them into bed. Sebastián’s mother Lucretía (Rebeca Aragón) takes time out of her busy duties to visit the police station in order to retrieve her son.

     The mother is an artist who paints portraits that appear to be a sort of mix between Mexican artist Frieda Kahlo and native Cuban portraiture to sell to the tourists. But even her work is currently out of popularity, and she has to visit street-stands throughout Havana to pick up a few sales. Sebastián keeps asking her to attend one of his drag shows, but she appears to express total indifference, her silence not necessarily a sign of her disapproval but simply of her exhaustion; perhaps she is even ill. When Sebastián demands to know the name of the painting she is working on, of a saucy prostitute friend Chichi (Paula Ali) with a cigar in her mouth, his mother replies “Cancer.”

     And despite her silence, the house seems an open space that allows the beautiful young man to express his own sensibilities, to music on TV and videos and creating new dances to them, to even show off to Chichi his cute body and ass.

 

     But clearly it hurts the boy that his mother never shows up his performances, and long portions of this short film by the Columbian and Cuban immigrant to Germany, Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau, are devoted to Mila waiting outside the drag venue to see if her mother might arrive. It’s painful simply to watch such a lovely drag figure in long moments of anticipation for something that will never happen.

      Meanwhile, life goes on. It’s Sebastien’s birthday, and even his wish before blowing out the candles, has to do with his mother. There is no father in sight.

      Once more he begs Lucretía to attend, reminding her that the show starts at 10. But she answers only by repeating that when she arrives home, she is usually exhausted, reminding him that there is food in the oven.

      There is one long scene that demonstrates the problematics of both their lives. As Sebastián waits seemingly forever for someone from the drag venue to pick him up, his mother, having been told her “saints” no longer sell, sits in a Havana street pondering where to go and what to do next to sell her art and support her and her son’s lives. Both are artists of sorts, unable to find the audiences they most need and desire.

    In the dressing room, Mila’s friend Estrellita (Jaime Reyes Nomi) says that she visited her mother, but her mother didn’t recognize her, presumably suggesting that the mother now has Alzheimer’s, not that she was in drag. Mila asks if her mother ever came to watch her perform. Estrellita’s silence answers the question.

      Meanwhile, back in Sebastien’s house, the worn-out mother picks up the cassette, puts it on the player and watches her son perform a song, a smile creeping to her lips—perhaps the first in the film—before her face is taken over by an expression of complete amusement and joy.  

      The film ends with Mila at her usual spot of endless expectation before she turns back to go in for her performance.

  Paetau’s short work is a such a rich and colorful portrait of world of emptiness and desire that it brings tears to your eyes.

 

Los Angeles, May 5, 2023 / Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).