The performance Benicio del Toro called “Brando-esque”
The Puerto Rican movie icon Benicio del Toro has eternally marked the film industry with a series of compelling and remarkable performances that make him one of the greatest Central American actors of all time. There’s a deep sense of versatility that runs through del Toro’s veins that makes him able to adapt to any character or any film genre.
Whether he’s portraying a sense of moral confusion as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects, giving an Academy Award-winning effort in Traffic as the steadfast Javier Rodriguez, or even delivering the comedy goods as Dr. Gonzo in the forever-memorable Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – not to mention Che and Sicario – del Toro has always come through with a resounding performance.
While so many of del Toro’s performances have indeed drawn rightful critical acclaim and captivated audiences across the world with their nuanced intensity, the actor himself has never stopped short of offering his praise for his fellow actors when they nail a production, whether they are his contemporaries or those that came before him.
When del Toro named his five favourite movies during a feature with Rotten Tomatoes, he pointed out a Cuban movie that contained a performance that he was truly blown away by. The movie in question is the black-and-white drama film Lucia, directed by Humberto Solas and written by Solas with Julio Garcia Espinosa and Nelson Rodriguez.
“Lucia is a Cuban film,” del Toro explained. “It’s a great story of three different moments in history and Cuban history seen through the eyes of three women, and the last story of Adela Legra is her name – and I think she gives one of those performances that is like, you know, Brando-esque.”
“It’s like, she’s so good in it,” del Toro added. “It’s just a movie that I think is still important today.” As the actor notes, Lucia occurs across three time periods that intensely capture the difficult nature of Cuba’s revolutionary past, with three women named Lucia representing a particular era of the politically turbulent country.
There’s a glorious sense of narrative ability in Solas’s movie, and the cinematography is nothing short of spellbinding. Documenting the oppression of the country’s inhabitants during the revolutionary uprising, Lucia is a truly iconic film in the realm of Cuban cinema, and its brilliance for Benicio del Toro comes from the magnetic performance of Adela Legra.