jotix100 Carla, a young woman living alone in Havana, has a thankless job in a local post office. She is the one responsible for canceling the stamps in all the letters that are deposited in that branch. She also has an knack for selecting different letters that "speak" to her. When she opens them, she transforms the text. Where there was despair, she writes a hopeful message; where there is loneliness, she is a solace for the one that will receive it. Even for a television personality she is instrumental in changing one of the letters that criticize him into a loving poem that when he reads it on his program, is an instant success.This young woman has won the visa lottery to go to the United States, where her parents are now living. At the beginning of the story, all she wants to do is get away from the monotony of her lonely life and go join her family in Miami. Fate intervenes in the form of Cesar, one of the letter carriers. He is young and begins to see that in spite of Carla's problems at work and in her personal life, she is worth pursuing.There are different interpretations about the Cuban realities in the film. One can see certain things in which some of the country's problems are seen by Carla, her co-workers, and even by her nosy neighbor. Carla wants to help others, but she hardly can help herself. When the new manager arrives, she sees right through her employee that something funny is happening. At the end, Carla receives the exit permit and we watch her take a taxi to the airport, but we realize she is not going anywhere.The film is a light comedy directed by Juan Carlos Cremata Maberti, who also co-wrote it and contributed to the editing of the film. Shot in black and white, it incorporates certain color elements to emphasize what's happening in a particular scene. Thus, we see the yellow pencil used by Carla, as well as the many colors of her Tiffany lamp, the gold fish in the glass jar, the yellow taxi, the butterfly and the rainbow at the end of the film while the background is always black and white.Thais Valdes plays Carla with stoic determination. She doesn't express much, making this enigmatic woman into somebody that is playing magic behind what she writes in the letters. Daisy Granados, a veteran actress of the Cuban cinema appears as Cunda, a manager from hell. Nacho Lugo is seen as Cesar and the delightful Paula Ali has some funny moments as the office spy.This film shows a new director in the Cuban cinema. Juan Carlos Cremata Maberti shows he has an innovative way for telling his story and has gathered an interesting team to work on it.

amerh Opinions seem to vary greatly about this film. Some viewers seem to like it, find it real cute, compare it to Amelie, enjoy the shifts in style and tone. Others seem to loathe it, find it derivative, decry the exaggerated acting, disjointed style and too simple story, and feel they have wasted 90 minutes watching it. The opinions run all over the map, as the grades and critics reviews show. Some love it, many hate it.I don't understand the latter group. This is exactly the kind of film I enjoy, in the same style as the movies of Richard Lester and Maurizio Nichetti (the early ones like Ratataplan). Start with a rather original story: a lonely post office employee who rewrites letters in her spare time. Amelie came out at the same time, and features a young girl who also tries to change others lives, but in many ways Nada is more fun and less smug. The disjointed style and abrupt shifts of tone kept me entertained. Here is a director who loves to play around. The slapstick scenes were exaggerated, as they should be, the romantic scenes funny and touching, and two sections showing how the letters affect their recipients were, in my opinion, successfully poetic.Malberti shows promising talent with interesting predominately black and white camera work, which sometimes imitates the style of silent comedy, from Chaplin features to Keystone Cops. The quirky editing, overhead shots, fanciful touches, and series of funny supporting characters all contribute to the movie's charm. Thais Valdez is really charming, at the same time a fun cute tomboy and a mature weary lover. She is a real find.If you like your films sober, intellectual and serious pass this one up. If you are ready for a wild mixture of bureaucratic satire, introspective social drama, slapstick comedy, cute love story, Havana travelogue and some poetic moments then jump along... It's a real fun ride!

raulpu50 While the story is quite trivial, the flamboyant filmmaking style makes up for it. It is definetely a step forward for the Cuban Film Industry. The film alternates almost chaplinesque moments with some poetic scenes. The film was shot inBlack and white but certain elements in the shots are colored. Thecinematography and editing are quite competent. Some of the characters are alittle exagerated and I didn't find that the tone was right in those moments. But overall: Nice.

openthebox I caught this Cuban film at at an arthouse film club. It was shown shortly after the magisterial 1935 Silly Symphony cartoon where the Isle of Symphony is reconciled with the Isle of Jazz. What with the recently deceased Ruben Gonzalez piped through speakers in this old cinema-ballroom and a Cuban flag hanging from peeling stucco rocaille motifs, the scene was set for a riproaring celebration of engaged filmmaking and synchronised hissing at the idiocies of Helms-Burton. But then the film started. And the cinema's peeling paint gradually became more interesting than the shoddy mess on-screen.The storyline of Nada Mas promises much. Carla is a bored envelope-stamper at a Cuban post office. Her only escape from an altogether humdrum existence is to purloin letters and rewrite them, transforming basic interpersonal grunts into Brontëan outbursts of breathless emotion. Cue numerous shots of photogenic Cubans gushing with joy, grief, pity, terror and the like.The problem is that the simplicity of the narrative is marred by endless excursions into film-school artiness, latino caricature, Marx brothers slapstick and even - during a particularly underwhelming editing trick - the celluloid scratching of a schoolkid defacement onto a character's face.Unidimensional characters abound. Cunda, the boss at the post office, is a humourless dominatrix-nosferatu. Her boss-eyed accomplice, Concha, variously points fingers, eavesdrops and screeches. Cesar, the metalhead dolt and romantic interest, reveals hidden writing talent when Carla departs for Miami. A chase scene (in oh-so-hilarious fast-forward) is thrown in for good measure. All this would be fine in a Mortadello and Filemon comic strip, but in a black-and-white zero-FX flick with highbrow pretensions, ahem. Nada Mas attempts to straddle the stile somewhere between the 'quirky-heroine-matchmakes-strangers' of Amelie and the 'poetry-as-great-redeemer' theme of Il Postino. Like Amelie, its protagonist is an eccentric single white female who combats impending spinsterdom by trying to bring magic into the lives of strangers. And like Il Postino, the film does not flinch from sustained recitals of poetry and a postman on a bicycle takes a romantic lead. Unfortunately, Nada Mas fails to capture the lushness and transcendence of either film.There are two things that might merit watching this film in a late-night TV stupor. The first is the opening overhead shot of Carla on a checker-tiled floor, which cuts to the crossword puzzle she is working on. The second is to see Nada Mas as a cautionary example: our post Buena Vista Social Club obsession with Cuban artistic output can often blinker us into accepting any dross that features a bongo on the soundtrack. This film should not have merited a global release - films such as Waiting List and Guantanamera cover similar thematic territory far more successfully.