Resumen de Fresa y chocolate: Heterosexuality, Paranoia and Maricón Cinema
Scholars have written on thematic concerns, ranging from the nation as allegory (A'ness 1996), a common reading strategy in Latin American film criticism, to issues of ideology, censorship, and nation (Balutei 2013, Gustafsson 2014), studies of religion and spirituality (Dalton 2016), critiques and studies of the revolution (Santi 1998, Deaver 2013), ideas of "Cubanía" (Cruz-Malave 1999), reconciliation (Santi 1998), the importance of language (Paz 1997), exiled within ("exilio interior") and marginalization (Thibaudeau 2012), and discourses of difference (Pastor 2019). [...]Luciano Martinez speaks of it being "possible to construct a genealogy of Latin American novels that deal with this practically unexplored facet in historical research: the failed reunion between homosexual and guerilla fighters" (55).2 Meanwhile, for José Quiroga, the story is allegorical, There are only two flavors in the ice cream palace of Coppelia, the site of most gay encounters in Havana, and the choice of flavors is part of a common Cuban or Caribbean way of signifying gender relations. Since only real men eat chocolate, the thirty-year-old gay queen Diego partakes of strawberry as he sits next to David, a budding writer who follows all the Party dictates. Diego has found in David a real strawberry in his dish, and he savors it with the only topping he can find: banned books, including, one by Mario Vargas Llosa. Why do David and Diego never fuck?" (Queer 147) This is the first sentence of Foster's analysis of Fresa y chocolate and he squarely situates the film as being about sexuality.
