(1995)

Submitted by Joseph C

2 votes 2

Yoyita is from Havana (in western Cuba), but dies while visiting her niece Georgina in Guantanamo (in eastern Cuba). Yoyita was with her childhood sweetheart, Candido.  They have to take the body from one tip of the island to the other for the burial.  The trip is organized by Georgina’s husband Adolfo.  Adolfo is a government employee and party hack, who has just been bumped down to a low level job.  He has hatched a money saving plan for transporting dead bodies at low cost by switching the coffin from one vehicle to another.  Adolfo is sure that f he can make his transport system work, he will get his old job back.  As they travel, they keep running into a truck driver named Mariano.  Mariano knew Georgina when she was a college professor.  Mariano wrote her a love letter, but then was so embarrassed, he left.

The trip is a nightmare of car problems, medical emergencies, and missed connections.  As they travel, Georgina realizes that Adolfo is an annoying bully, that nobody likes.  Mariano reveals that he still loves her.  Candido and Yoyita loved each other, but where rarely together, because they put their careers before love.  Candido counsels Georgina that life is to short to miss our on love.

When the reach the funeral home in Havana, Candido looks in the coffin and drops dead of a heart attack.  Adolfo sees that there was a mixup along the way, and they have the wrong coffin with the wrong body.  Before anyone else sees, he closes the coffin, and makes it a closed coffin funeral.  Candido is buried next to “Yoyita” (only Adolfo knows it is the wrong body).  Georgina leaves Adolfo and goes off on a bike with Mariano.