Seven Oaks Magazine.

We'll never know what anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) would have made of the Cuban revolution, the tropical phenomenon that has defied Uncle Sam for more than 45 years. However, we can pretty safely assume that Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights wasn’t quite the combination of dance and revolution that she had in mind.

Seventeen long years have passed since Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray electrified a generation of preteens in the original Dirty Dancing, a film whose soundtrack is permanently wired into the heads of anyone in their mid-to-late twenties today. More remake than sequel, the 2004 version plays on the same themes and recycles the same predictable plot line: rich girl defies and shocks parents and their sterile social class by engaging in a sensual dance of the unwashed masses, while simultaneously falling for her working-class dance partner. Diego Luna, of Y Tu Mama Tambien fame, and newcomer Romola Garai make up the new dance team, Javier and Katey.

The big difference in the sequel is the setting, as in place of 1963 country club America we have 1958 Cuba, complete with that country’s revolutionary upheaval as backdrop. So, the only really original character in this one is Fidel Castro. Although the bearded one does not -- thankfully -- actually appear in the film, the revolution he led provides a major plot device, with the climactic scenes coinciding with the victorious climax of the revolution on New Year’s Eve, 1958.

Swayze, another aging star (looking his age but still getting down like a twenty-something), does indeed make an appearance. No longer on Hollywood’s A-list, -- post-Dancing he starred in the likes of Point Break and Ghost – his apparition in this film was nevertheless greeted with applause and cheers in the theatre. Swayze can dance; the scenes of his nameless character providing instruction and inspiration to Katey are among the film’s best. While Luna and Garai are clearly actors pretending to be dancers, Swayze might be best described as a dancer pretending to be an actor, with all due respect to fans of Road House.

The setting, late ‘50s Cuba (as played by Puerto Rico) on the eve of the revolution's victory, is not a new one, having served as backdrop in both Godfather II (1974) and Havana (1990). The latter, a Robert Redford production, contains mainly parallels to Havana Nights, though it was clearly aimed at an older demographic. Redford played a high-rolling American gambler who falls for the wife of an imprisoned Cuban revolutionary. One American just wants to dance, the other just wants to gamble.

In both films, the privileged Americans are sympathetic to the rebels, without having a deep understanding of the issues and without letting that cloud their overarching desire for their Cuban love interests to come home with them to America. This theme makes for some absurd dialogue, Redford at one point urging his lover to abandon her dreams of changing the world for the chance to "change my world". Meanwhile, Katey is incredulous that the revolution’s triumph could mean trouble for American business interests, since it’s supposed to bring “freedom for all people". Javier flatly, and all too unromantically, rebukes her, explaining that it meant "[freedom] for Cuban people".

The Cuban people are depicted largely through caricatures. Claudio, Javier’s older brother, and his rebel friends are humourless thugs, eagerly eschewing the joy of living for the greater good of the movement (Anyone who has actually met revolutionary Cubans knows that this is a very false dichotomy). Meanwhile, the bulk of the Cubans are portrayed as apolitical, one-dimensional, sensual creatures, sweating and gyrating in the night clubs. Javier is the middle ground, sympathizing with the revolution, but wishing to keep his distance from it, and to be free to dance and fall in love. Luna’s talent, in depicting this tension and in his overall screen presence and charisma, is one of the film’s most redeeming features.

Indeed the tension between "dance and revolution", or between the desire for personal development and expression and the hard struggle to achieve these existential ideals for all, is present throughout the film. One wonders, though, if the Dirty Dancing franchise is the best place to explore this theme, and whether this might not just send everybody home less than fully satisfied. If you’re just going for the fromage and the dancing, then the revolution might seem like an unwelcome intrusion in an otherwise comfortably obvious plot. Because for the American interests involved in 1950s Cuba, neither the facts nor the fiction had a Hollywood ending.