The King of Havana (2015)

The King of Havana (Spanish: El rey de La Habana) is a 2015 Spanish-Dominican drama film directed by Agustí Villaronga which adapts Pedro Juan Gutiérrez's dirty realist novel El rey de La Habana. It stars Maykol David Tortolo, Yordanka Ariosa and Héctor Medina. It is set in the Cuban capital during the Special Period.

Plot

Set in the Cuban capital during the Special Period, Reynaldo ('Rey'), returns to his old home in the wake of his escape from a juvenile prison, and wanders around Old Havana, meeting with prostitutes Magda and Yunisleidi.

Cast

Production

A joint Spain-Dominican Republic co-production, the film was produced by Pandora Cinema, Tusitala, AIE El Rey de La Habana and Esencia Films. Filming began on 16 April 2015 in the Dominican Republic and it had already wrapped by 4 May 2015.

Yordanka Ariosa said the sex scenes with Maykol David Tortoló, who was only sixteen at the time of filming, was one of the hardest things she has ever had to do.

Maykol David Tortoló revealed that his penis was digitally enlarged in some of his nude scenes.

Release

The film screened at the 63rd San Sebastián International Film Festival on 23 September 2015. Distributed by Filmax, it opened in Spanish theatres on 16 October 2015.

Reception

Guy Lodge of Variety deemed the film to be "an unabashedly torrid urban melodrama that will enrapture or repel viewers — or, quite possibly, both — with its upfront, up-in-your-face excess".

Neil Young of The Hollywood Reporter assessed the film to be "a two-hour immersion in poverty, squalor, sex, violence, prostitution and death", summing up as bottom line: "an extravagantly raunchy wallow in sordid poverty".

Lee Marshall of ScreenDaily considered that the film, guilty of using "shock tactics for effect", "can't help but leave a bad taste in the mouth at the end of its entertainingly sensationalist two-hour ride".

Jordi Costa of El País, wrote about the film's brutal story, in which "the small outbreaks of human warmth" "make the blunt and desperate outcome to have an outright annihilating effect.

Accolades

See also

List of Spanish films of 2015

References

External links

The King of Havana at ICAA's Catálogo de Cinespañol