When everything is for sale, what's the value of love? Jesus does make up for a troupe of drag performers in Havana, but dreams of being a performer. When he finally gets his chance to be on stage, a stranger emerges from the crowd and punches him in the face. The stranger is his father Angel, a former boxer, who has been absent from his life for 15 years. As father and son clash over their opposing expectations of each other, Viva becomes a love story as the men struggle to understand one another and become a family again.
The Promises of Love It's not like before. The time for promises or child play is over. This film is about adulthood, the tragedy of feeling we're getting older alone an distanced from love and caresses. But it's also a story about happy pasts and unexpected and doubtful futures. And it all plays out in the middle of a scene where the ex-lovers lay their cards on the table hoping to uncover secrets and display truths. Who hasn't made promises out of love? Who hasn't tasted the infinite flavor of avowed loyalty and kept it as a weapon in defense of utopia and memories? How many of us do not safeguard tenderness with the perpetuity of an oath? Esteban and Mayra, by the time we meet them, are two human beings who once loved each other; who shared not only their bodily fluids, but also their hopes amidst social processes that led them to believe in impossibilities and to dream; dream of chimeras and imagine untruths. And that's the story. In a Cuba that is reluctant to lose its memories.