Maybe I am just completely inept but I never noticed what exactly Juanita wanted to tell Andre before he got on the plane. Was it about the film strips? Or something else?
~Nikohl~
"Some mornings it just doesn't pay to gnaw through the leather straps."
Yes, I think that must have been it.
sharesounding at first as a hint at a possible pregnancy, a wonderful double entendre.
shareYes, I thought the same thing-- it would turn out she was pregnant. But it's just a loose end in a rambling slow-paced script.
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Foxfirebrand said "it's just a loose end in a rambling slow-paced script."
No it is not. At first I thought she was gonna tell him about some pregnancy or something as well. But she specifically told him to call her after he had gone through security, but he couldn't reach her because she had been killed. On the plane however he found out by himself that the gift she had given him, the book, contained extra copies of the pictures he was trying to smuggle out. So naturally she wanted to talk to him to check if he had gotten the book past the communist security agents. He would have told her yes, and maybe added that he didn't get the stuff hidden in the razor-box through. Upon which she would have told him to check the book, meaning she helped him get the photos out despite the search. One can of course also speculate that she might have had something else - on a more personal level - to tell him as well, but for anyone who actually WATCHED the film it was certainly not "just a loose end".
This scene is not "just a loose end". Renaldo is correct, if one watched the film and paid attention...Often I wonder if Juanita was going to tell him something personal..like she was pregnant. Their love story was never going to end beautifully and both of them know it.
This is one of my favorite films! Love the intrigue!
Loved the way Hitch directed many of the scenes...esp the scene when Juanaita was shot...the way she collapsed on the floor and how they pulled her dress to make it look like blood. I noticed that the picky ones commented about the wires in the hem of her skirt..but good grief...the audience isn't stupid..they know there must be a trick to make her skirt move in such a way.
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Beautifully done film . . . though I never quite believed Juanita loved Andre--he was too stiff . . .
shareConsider that she might have known by then that the Mendozas had been caught and tortured, and that she would then have known she herself was doomed to being arrested.
I am going from memory so I'm not sure about this--I'll have to see the movie again.
i thought about her being pregnant, then i thought about how common that would have been. i think she wanted to tell him that it would be the last time he would see her, but she knew he would not have left if she had told him about getting caught.
sharewell obviously she suspected the house to be searched and that's why she made double sure the pics wouldn't be found.. brilliant actually, like her death scene - a few moments later the shaken Rico walks away like in a trance, not knowing whether he killed a spy or murdered an innocent friend
shareI don't think Rico walked away wondering if he was wrong. I think he was shaken because he had been in love with Juanita and admired her. He also envisioned a future with her, most likely, even if it wasn't marriage, and had just lost the hope for that future. He was also likely upset that he himself had been duped. His pride had been hurt. I thought it was an interesting touch to round him out that way.
shareYes, several dreams have been shattered for Parra, whose future now looks dark.
It is presumably known to the Cuban leadership that his assistant Uribe was a traitor, who enabled a foreign agent to obtain photographs of items vital to national security. Now the woman he hoped to win, widow of “a hero of the revolution”, has also proved to be a traitor who enabled a foreign agent to obtain more photographs of items vital to national security.
While Parra has shown correct revolutionary principles by ensuring the culprits were “shot while attempting to escape”, isn’t his judgement over who to trust highly suspect? Has he not only endangered the Cuban revolution but worsened the already rock-bottom relationship with the United States and, most dangerous of all perhaps, embarrassed the Soviet Union?
After seeing the movie a couple of times, there was no doubt in my mind that Juanita's secret was the film strips embedded in the book. However, I still wondered if Rico had second thoughts about killing her when they found none of the goods on Andre. I say that knowing that Juanita did kind of admit to being a traitor because she saw what the Revolution had become.
shareRegardless . . . she had to be eliminated . . .
shareI think she already knew she was in trouble, probably would have her home searched and found to be a traitor, and either would have one last conversation with Andre or he would find out she had been arrested. Instead of her passive,static, melodramatic death, I would have had her putting up a fight and trying to make a run for it, before finally getting shot in the process.
RSGRE
In the novel she's arrested and tortured . . . the whole thing is very different from the film . . .
share