So this is how it happened! Fidel Castro’s revolution didn’t break the backbone of a naïve Cuban population, it merely put an end to interracial shagging. At least that’s the gist of director Guy Ferland’s Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, which would have audiences believe that the sole purpose of the revolution was to rid Cuba of a dangerous American presence, and though the film’s gringos are certainly icky, so are the natives.
Though Batista has one foot out the door, Katey Miller (Romola Garai) and her bourgeois parents move to the Caribbean isle nonetheless because the revolution doesn’t seem to effect gringos who live in five-star hotels. Katey is all peaches and cream, but she’s propelled to go slumming after a white twerp gets too grabby and the catty Eve (January Jones) refers to waiter Javier (Diego Lunda) as a “stupid spic.” Here, the revolution is specious background noise, and more important than Javier’s non-descript cries for freedom (from what and for whom exactly you’ll never know) is Katey’s bourgeoning womanhood and independence.
Written by Victoria Arch and Boaz Yakin, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights is being touted as a re-imagination of the 1987 mega-hit Dirty Dancing, but this unofficial prequel more accurately evokes a kitschy blend of Lambada and Star Wars. Look no further than Javier’s feel-the-force dance lessons, which look to teach Katey “the dance of slaves.” He says, “Just feel the music,” and when she observes the natives dancing, she remarks, “Look at how they feel the music.” He wants her to “touch that part,” but does she really know what part he wants her to touch?
Ferland doesn’t understand the importance of dance to the Cuban people—rhythm as revolution against stasis. Katey and Javier bump and grind to the supreme shock of everyone around them and the filmmakers have a darling time emphasizing the “dirty” in Dirty Dancing. When the bourgeoning lovers enter the club La Rosa Negra (because black, appartently, is the most sinister color, especially with a sibilant “r” rolling off the tongue), Katey beholds not a revolution of movement but an bacchanalia of Cuban peasantry—sweaty natives rubbing each other at near mach speeds. This spectacle of salivating, rapidly moving people naturally scares the shit out of the upper-class ghoul played by Jonathan Jackson, but it’s one that the filmmakers will happily allow Katey to appropriate by film’s end.
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