Portrait of Teresa

Havana housewife and mother, textile worker and convener of her factory's cultural group: Teresa has to balance the demands of an exhausting triple day, coping all the while with conspicuous lack of cooperation from her husband and other Cuban heels. Notable among their number is a television interviewer whose oily machismo is an acute indictment of the female image projected by the media. The archaic attitudes and insulting assumptions that confront working women, even after a revolution, are sketched in with a skilful lightness of touch. Vega directs in bright primary colours, and with a fine eye for the minute but revealing moments and movements of daily life.