Lust and desperation make an odd pair and, in the end, will make you do the strangest things in Gabriel de Varona’s short film, Love and Hunger.
Our tale opens at night in a bar. Former lovers Olivia and Hector meet for the first time in thirty years after leaving the island. Here, we are transported to their past, where our young lovers find themselves washed up on the beach of a deserted island.
When the pair struggles to find food, the lovers soon become annoyed with one another because maybe Hector is entirely useless. Finally, with no food to be found, desperate measures are taken as the two begin to hallucinate one another as their next meal.
“…the two begin to hallucinate one another as their next meal.”
It shouldn’t surprise you that Love and Hunger is a comedy. Writer/director Gabriel de Varona sets a light and humorous tone right from the start. By introducing ourselves to Olivia and Hector as older adults, the fun comes in working this relationship backward to when we are re-introduced to them as young lovers escaping Cuba. This is about as deep as the drama gets. The rest of the film is a series of silly shenanigans with an ending that resembles a Warner Brothers’ Looney Toons of old, and De Varona’s cast pulls off the laughs admirably.
If you’re looking for fourteen minutes of silly fun and dark castaway humor, Love and Hunger is the place to go.
