Yuli

Car­los Acos­ta was a guest dancer of the Roy­al Bal­let in Lon­don from 1998 to 2015. Yuli, direct­ed by Icíar Bol­laín and writ­ten by Paul Laver­ty, chron­i­cles his rise from the impov­er­ished streets of Havana. The film takes place over three time­lines, with one show­ing the real-life Acos­ta prepar­ing for a per­for­mance based on his life, which then plays into flash­backs, which then have real footage mixed in with them.

If it all sounds slight­ly con­vo­lut­ed, in the hands of Bol­laín the blur­ring between truth and fic­tion, mul­ti­ple time­lines, and chore­o­graphed inter­vals, all work in uni­son to form a ful­ly realised film. Bol­laín and Laver­ty con­struct a com­plex nar­ra­tive that allows for the con­ven­tion­al approach to a biopic as well as one where Acos­ta can trans­late his emo­tion via his own medi­um, dance.

This makes room for the beau­ti­ful inter­mis­sions where Acos­ta as his father and anoth­er male dancer as a his younger self play out key plot details. These moments bring the audi­ence a great deal clos­er to Acos­ta as a per­son along with trans­lat­ing his inner tur­moil bet­ter than any oth­er dancer or actor could.

Towards the end of the film, archive footage of Acos­ta per­form­ing ​‘Romeo and Juli­et’ is used. Although the footage is notice­ably grainy in com­par­i­son to the rest of the film, the choice is one of integri­ty, as the audi­ence is allowed to cel­e­brate in it’s authen­tic­i­ty. Per­haps inevitably though, the real Car­los Acos­ta and the actors who por­tray him end up feel­ing dis­con­nect­ed. It is dif­fi­cult to relate the three per­for­mances togeth­er and as a result the char­ac­ter as a whole lacks much emo­tion­al weight.

More sub­tly, but equal­ly as com­pelling, the film paints a pic­ture of Cuba and the unrest and inequal­i­ty for it’s cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly those of colour. This becomes more dis­tinct when Acos­ta returns home after years away and is forced to realise that, in his own words, ​“I must be the only Cuban who wants to stay here.”