The Life of Juanita Castro

Based on a life (surely not the life) of Castro's sister Juana, this is one of the rarest of the rarities in our Warhol retrospective and a revelation to boot. In 1965 Warhol already had deconstructed the narrative (and mercilessly); members of the cast sit as if posing for a family portrait and proceed to dish out said portrait with delicious venom, following the cues of stage manager (and scriptwriter) Ronald Tavel. Marie Menken's Juanita is indomitable, as might be expected, despite the fact that she can't recite one palabra of Spanish, and Mercedes Ospina's Fidel is, in a word, riveting. With Marina Ospina as Che and Elecktrah as Castro's brother Raoul, the cast is altogether earnest (which is important, here as elsewhere) and the film, altogether hilarious.

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