Wasp Network Directed by Olivier Assayas

October 11, 2020 Roberto Matteucci

Wasp Network

Directed by Olivier Assayas

Starring: Ana de Armas, Penélope Cruz, Wagner Moura, Edgar Ramírez, Gael García Bernal

Leonardo Sbaraglia, Gisela Chipe Maria, Steve Howard, Juan Ángel

Country: France, Belgium, Spain

Year 2019

Review author: Roberto Matteucci

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"My hero was John Wayne."

The strait between Cuba and Florida is only 180 kilometres long, but it is very dangerous.

In that sea area, immigration of Cubans has continued for years in search of new opportunities.

After 1994, when Cuba announced the "special period in peacetime", the situation worsened quickly, and the number of departures increased. The emergency depended on the end of the USSR and the cut of the Russian subsidies.

Cubans, already accustomed to sacrifices, shortage in the shops, the low value of the pesos, will enter an even more serious crisis.

Cooperative and trade with eastern countries were essential to ensure the minimum public service and the supply of oil. With Mikhail Gorbachev, aid ended, and social assistance also collapsed.

Fidel Castro justifies the complicated moment with his usual emphasis and charisma:

"Estamos en Período Especial, un período difícil, un período de los más difíciles de nuestra historia. ¿Por qué? porque nos hemos tenido que quedar solos frente al Imperio, solitos. ¿Y qué hacía falta para quedarse solos frente al Imperio? Hacía falta unidad, pero hacía falta valor, hacía falta patriotismo, habría falta espíritu revolucionario. Un pueblo débil, un pueblo blandengue, un pueblo cobarde, se rinde y vuelve a la esclavitud. Pero un pueblo digno, un pueblo valiente como el de nosotros no se rinde y no vuelve jamás a la esclavitud". (1)

The escapes from Cuba intensified, the discontent grew, the boats left the Malecón towards Miami. Political interference came from the United States. Florida's anti-Castro Cuban communities even organized terrorist activities in Cuba to target tourism.

Cuba, and especially Fidel Castro, have enjoyed a good press, a lot of intellectual support. They launched potent counter-offensives, all won despite the scarcity of means.

Cuba fought two battles

In 1999, the case of Elián González, a six-year-old boy, rescued by the US Navy on a lifeboat. He had fled with his mother and her lover. Due to the bad weather, the woman died.

Fidel Castro began an international cultural offensive. They want Elián - a son of Cuba – comes back home. A few months later, Elián is in Habana to hug his father.

The second challenge happened in the same period with the trial of the Five Cubans. This episode of contemporary history, together with the background of the nineties, is narrated in the film Wasp Network by French director Olivier Assayas, presented at the 76th Venice Film Festival.

In September 1998, five Cuban citizens were arrested in Miami, charged with conspiracy and espionage. Was it true? Is it possible that Cuba prepared and realized in total secrecy, a network of secret agents infiltrated in the United States and the Cuban anti-Castro communities of Florida, cheating all the illustrious American police and intelligence agencies?

Incredibly, the FBI, the CIA did not notice the activity of some exiles for years. They planned fake flees, created fake lives in the United States. Their task was to send confidential information to Habana.

The Five Cubans were released from 2011 to 2014, to be exchanged for other spies.

The five escaped from Cuba pretending as immigrants.

The organization was perfect, hidden even from their families. Absurdly, Habana police persecuted their parents and spouses. In Florida, they came into contact with Cuban associations and adapted to their shady trades, such as terrorist attacks, drug smuggling.

In 1998, they were imprisoned.

Wasp Network has many social and political elements, it exalts the story and at the same time depresses it.

The first issue, mentioned by the director, is structural. Wasp Network is a historical and non-espionage film:

Cineuropa: Was it a challenge and a different experience making a spy movie in Cuba? Olivier Assayas: I don't see it as a spy film; I see it as a historical film. It was more expensive than my previous movie, but still, we didn't have enough money to shoot the kind of film it is. We were stretching everything we had to the craziest extent. Every single day brought new problems, so it was very tough to make. It was tough physically, and it was tough logistically. It was extremely complicated to finance, but it was an exhilarating adventure because we shot a movie in Cuba, where this kind of picture has never really been made before. We mixed a Cuban crew with a handful of French heads of departments. We were dealing with modern history in Cuba, which is something that Cuban filmmakers never let any foreign filmmaker do, so the whole thing was an adventure. (2)

The choice is a pity. Using the espionage genre would have been interesting. The Cubans would have been opposing ideals of John Le Carré's solitary and complex spy figure. They have vigorous attitudes. They abandon their wives and children to insinuate themselves into a very periled country.

The genre was rejected for short budget, only the historical context persisted. Unfortunately, it is insufficient to insert a scene from a speech by Fidel Castro in the editing, to elevate the genre historically. The details are not exciting and develop without intensity. The characters are too many but impossible to follow.

Juan Pablo Roque and Rene Gonzalez are the two main figures patiently described. They are two models of life, two examples, courageous, reckless, strong.

In reality, the author has a transparent preference. And, it has an intelligent preference. While the men played being superheroes, someone was suffering at home in Habana. It was Olga, the wife of René Gonzalez. A beautiful woman, she loves her husband and daughter. The detectives inform her of the desertion, she is upset. How could he run away without advising her? Without bringing them too? It is a personal betrayal. Besides, Olga has daily difficulties. The police are observing her, threatening her. She has to work to get some money to aid her daughter.

Director says:

“Olga González, played by Penélope Cruz, is another fascinating character in that she’s a strong woman in a story that is predominantly set in the world of men.

To me the emotional core of the film is the character of Olga, because she’s brought into a story that is not her story — it’s her husband’s — and it completely shakes up her world and transforms her destiny. She ends up accepting the choices of her husband. Initially she’s a victim who suffers from decisions that were not hers. But then she takes over and she’s the one making those decisions, and she has to make some pretty tough choices. She decides to fight for her husband, and accept his fate in order to save her family. At the end of the film, we come to admire her.” (3)

Olga is not a super spy, but without her, the subject would lose humanity, and the story would be totally masculine, without feeling. Cuban agents are talented and brave, but they are merciless with their families. Olga is distressed but after she discovers the truth, she forgives him and fights to free him.

Wasp Network was shot in Cuba. The director films some wonderful postcards from the capital, as the popular Malecón, or the runs of René in the streets of Habana Vieja. There are the memories of Ernest Hemingway in Habana such as the Bodeguita del Medio. There are the interiors of the houses, poor but rich of cunning and aptitude for the human struggle.

These scenes are antithetical to the abundant richness of Miami. There is a lot of money in Florida, and above all, in expatriate's hands, they bought luxury villas, celebrated lavish weddings.

Everything is interrupted by off-screen noise of a helicopter, it is the assault of FBI G-Man.

The language is in the many images of light, in fact, Cuba and Miami have in common the brightness of the sun.

The sea always filmed in its width, in its beauty with an establishment-shot on the immense expanse of water.

Dialogues are important. The numerous shot-reverse-shot should be useful to psychologically increase the protagonists.

The film is unable to outline many aspects. She succeeds with Olga, Penélope Cruz is cheerful and respectable, but the other ones are elusive. The script is inadequate because the writers cut, delete, accelerate events and characters.

The Olivier Assayas confirms this:

“Obviously I had to simplify some of the events and adjust the chronology for narrative reasons. But I kept, and vastly emphasized, the basics of the first couple of chapters, before we come to understand who René González actually is.” (3)

Bibliografia:

Alejandra Bronfman, Isole in movimento Cuba e i Caraibi dal 1989, EDT, Torino, 2008