By William Plasencia
"I like telling lies to people," Mexican actor Diego Luna says, barely concealing a laugh as he prepares for a photo shoot to promote his new film, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights-- a retelling of the popular movie set, this time on the eve of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
That audiences from Mexico City to Miami to Madrid have lined up in droves to be decieved by this boyishly handsome 25-year-old would not be an exaggeration. Since his breakthrough role as the disaffected youth Tenoch in director Alfonso Cuaron's 2001 film Y Tu Mama Tambien, Luna has worked steadily in films in Mexico, Hollywood, and abroad. Now readying for the debut of his first leading role in an English-language film, he is bracing for how fans and audiences will react to his most commercial film yet. "Havana Nights is basically a love story," Luna says in a telephone interview from California where the Mexican native was filming The Terminal with actor Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg. "There is a whole generation that doesn't know Cuba before Fidel and they will now have that chance. The movie takes a lot of risks placing the movie during the revolution."
Produced by Miramax and Artisan Films, the film takes place in 1958 in the titular city where Katey Miller, played by actress Romola Garai in the role made famous by Jennifer Grey, begins her life as an ex-patriot American. Replacing Patrick Swayze's hunk is Luna, who plays a humble, Cuban hotel waiter named Javier who woos Katey on to the dance florr to--according to the studio's press materials--"learn the slinky, spectacular moves that Javier seems to know in his bones." While the two would-be lovers heat up the screen, Havana-- Puerto Rico in reality--boils over with revolutionary fervor.
Luna, who says he had never professionally danced before, spent nearly three months practicing and preparing for the role of Javier, and he is joined by director John Ferland and a cast that includes Sela Ward, most recently on television's Once and Again, and John Slattery, last seen in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. The original 1987 movie was so popular, grossing more than $170 million and spawning countless dirty dancing contests worldwide, that replicating its success may be difficult. Luna was reluctant to compare the two films-- and quick to point out that he was only 8-years-old when it came out--though he says he thinks audiences will like Havana Nights and accept it for what it is: "a movie with a lot of great music and dancing."
Indeed, while the embargo against trading and traveling to the communist island remains in place, Americans' love affair with all things Cuban has grown stronger in the last few years as Cuba's music, culture, and forbidden mystique have filtered in to the public consciousness. Filmmakers for the most part have shied away from setting their films in Cuba for fear of offending Cuban Americans or because of political backlash, but that wariness may be fading. "Whether they are in the island or off the island, Cubans all have an intensisty and they talk about Cuba all the time and with such a love for the island," he says. "I hope this movie will get all these people and more to see Cuba. It's not so political."
Luna is not shy about starring in controversial movies. His pedigree includes playing the charged role of Carlos in director Julian Schnabel's politically charged film, Before Night Falls, about the life and death of the celebrated poet and author Reynaldo Arenas, who died of complications stemming from AIDS while in exile in New York. He pressed the flesh with Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo's lover Alejandro Gonzalez Arias, in director Julie Taymor's 2003 film Frida. And more recently he starred in director Martin Salinas' Nicotina, a dark comedy centered around lust and greed against the backdrop of Mexico City.
But it was Luna's role as a wealthy and superbly bored urban teenager in the comming-of-age flick Y Tu Mama Tambien that earned him an enduring spot in pop culture. In the movie, he stars next to his longtime childhood friend, actor Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays a similar role as Tenoch's best friend and companion, Julio. In this comedy, the duo embarks on a road trip though the Mexican countryside with an older woman, Luisa, played by Spanish actress Maribel Verdu. That this supposed older woman is barely in her 30s means little to the youths who alternatively spend their time seducing her and being seduced, while all three slowly reveal truths to one another and to themselves.
"That was the greatest movie that I've been in so far and the one I love the most," Luna says. "I had the chance to work with my best friend and a director that I admire a lot. I won a lot of confidence in my work after that."
Y Tu Mama Tambien broke box office records in Mexico and ushered in a level of sexual candor in the country. The film was shockingly sexy enough to assure it would recieve plenty of word-of-mouth from both audiences and critics alike, and it became the most widely distibuted foreign-language film in recent U.S. history. Luna says the movie's appeal springs from its universal themes.
"It was more than a Latin American movie. It was something that we all go through of finding out about ourselves."
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