Strawberry and Chocolate (Fresa y chocolate) (18)

An inexplicably delayed release for this Oscar-nominated Cuban drama from 1993, by the director of Memories of Underdevelopment.

As in that earlier film, Tomas Gutiérrez Alea brings together themes of political, sexual and cultural repression, though here with more warmth. It's set in Havana in 1979: David (Vladimir Cruz) is a naive idealist, about his girlfriend and the Communist Party; shortly after she chucks him for a man with more money he is approached by Diego (Jorge Perugorría), a flamboyantly gay man who flatters and bribes him, with literature, into visiting his flat. Diego is after only one thing. David's motives are more ambiguous, he tells his ideologically pure room-mate that he's spying on an anti-social element; little by little, a friendship develops. The characterisation is crude at times – to begin with Perugorría camps it up like John Inman – and it verges on the preachy, but it's a generous and intriguing film.