Juan Carlos Tabío first found acclaim co-directing Strawberry and Chocolate and Guantanamera with the Cuban master Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, and his solo ventures since have carried on an excellent legacy. Although Tabío's latest film is a seemingly simple comedy about the power and allure of money, it offers a profound meditation on the socio-economic difficulties facing Cuba today. In Horn of Plenty,the country's isolation, bureaucracy, poverty and enduring class discrepancies are all illuminated in a sexy romp through the Cuban interior.
When news of an inheritance for members of the Castiñeiras family reaches the small town of Yamaguey, the community is thrown into chaos. Bernardito (a wonderfully droll performance by Strawberry and Chocolate's Jorge Perugorría) is at first skeptical, but after accessing the Internet and discovering that the story of the unexpected legacy has made headlines around the world, he begins to believe it could be true.
In the eighteenth century a group of Castiñeiras nuns deposited treasure in a British bank, and it has been accumulating interest ever since. According to the authorities, the amount owing to each family has reached millions of euros. Buoyed by the promise of wealth, Castiñeiras descendents from all around Cuba begin banding together to try to prove their eligibility. But matters are complicated by the fact that there are two different Castiñeiras family lines, and no one is sure which faction is entitled to the money.
Then there is the slow and shy Miguelón, who has had his eye on the town beauty, Yurima, since they were children. His dream girl suddenly finds Miguelón terribly charming, an unsurprising development considering his surname is Castiñeiras. Their engagement and impending wedding spur a disastrously excessive spending spree across Yamaguey – with hilarious results.
Horn of Plenty's wonderfully crafted and nuanced script interweaves several storylines with unpredictable twists and turns. What resonates most deeply in Tabío's film, however, is the idea that people often take for granted the wealth that abounds in their lives while persisting in the quest for material gain.
Diana Sanchez
Juan Carlos Tabío was born in Havana and worked at the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográfico. His feature films include Plaff! Or Too Afraid of Life (88), Strawberry and Chocolate (94, co-director), The Elephant and the Bicycle (94), Guantanamera (95, co-director), The Waiting List (00), So Far Away (03) and Horn of Plenty (08).