The Italian director Tommaso Santambrogio shot “Oceans Are the Real Continents” in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, with a cast of nonactors playing like-named characters they had a hand in shaping. We’re hardly in fly-on-the-wall territory here; to cite one example among many, few documentarians would be lucky enough to catch a ceiling collapsing from heavy rainfall in a carefully composed static shot. But neither is the film pure fiction.
The much-in-vogue hybrid mode proves more cryptic than edifying this time around. “Oceans Are the Real Continents” bears a significant resemblance to Roberto Minervini’s more galvanizing “What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?” — another case of an Italian filmmaker’s finding raw material in real lives in North America. Both films are shot in black-and-white, and both unfold on parallel tracks.
One thread in “Oceans” concerns Milagros, an elderly woman who reads letters that a loved one, Miguel, sent in the 1980s from Angola, where he served the Cuban effort to support that ideologically aligned government. His words are heard in voice-over as he speaks of yearning for her across an ocean.
Elsewhere, two boys, Frank and Alain, get up to assorted mischief, sneaking onto a baseball diamond at night or horsing around on railroad tracks, although there are hints that Frank’s family may leave Cuba soon. And an artistic couple, Edith and Alex, contend with friction in their relationship as Edith, a gifted puppeteer, rehearses a marionette show and prepares to travel to Italy on tour.
All three strands involve experiences of separation (snatches of radio allude to Cuba’s problems with mass emigration), a theme that Santambrogio gently counters with a circular structure. All five principals are first glimpsed in the opening scene — a performance piece starring Alex as Christ on the cross — and all are united in a gorgeous train station tableau near the end.
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