Veronica Lynn Movies

Directed by Orlando Rojas, Las Noches of Constantinopla (The Nights of Constantinople) follows erotic fiction writer Hernan Abascal (Liberto Rabal), his sister and aspiring songstress Cristiana (María Isabel Díaz), their Uncle Jorge (Francisco Rabal), and his illegitimate son, Pachi (Vladimir Villar). This highly repressed family is largely under the control of their grandmother, Eugenia (Veronica Lynn), who resides over the household with an iron fist. When Cristiana manages to score a singing gig, the family is eager to throw themselves back into city life. However, Hernan worries doing that will ultimately kill their grandmother, which nearly happens when she falls into a coma after learning about his risqué writing. Seemingly as soon as her head hits the hospital pillow, the Abascal household goes wild. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

The five short films gathered here showcase the talents of some of Cuba's newest directing talent (in the early 1990s), and have stories centering around the current issues Cuban women face. In the first film, after over twenty years of unappreciated servitude and nurturing of others, a wife and mother completely loses her willingness to stifle herself. In the second, Cuban native Laura is at a hotel that caters to foreign guests and is waiting to meet a friend who left many years ago. She is insulted to find that she is treated like a second-class citizen here because she doesn't have foreign currency and isn't speaking a foreign language or speaking with a foreign accent. The third segment features an unmarried woman who closeted herself after the revolution, frightened, no doubt, of everything. When a telephone repairman visits, somehow her shell becomes less solid. The fourth feature shows a woman who was abandoned by her husband and longs for his return, even though she has found comfort in the arms of a lover. The last one explores what happens when a self-involved intellectual girl student who thinks herself liberal takes a conservative boy to bed with her. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Lejania is a poetic title that underscores an unstated sense of loss through separation -- though what is exactly lost in this drama is the twist. The 26-year-old Reinaldo and his wife wait in their apartment in Havana for a visit from his mother (Veronica Lynn), a longtime resident of Miami, and his cousin Ana (Isabel Santos) who lives in New York. The mother arrives loaded down with gifts -- a very Latin custom. But there are insurmountable differences between life in the U.S. and life in the embargo-plagued economy of Cuba where the son's old values clash with his mother's acquired views. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi