Grief With a Loaded Gun and a Punchline

MOVIE REVIEWS
The Old Man and the Parrot
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Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 25m
Director(s): Gabriel de Varona
Writer(s): Gabriel de Varona, Kevin Ondarza
Cast: Ruben Rabasa, René Lavan, Isabella Bobadilla, Serafin Falcon, Gabriel de Varona
Where to Watch: shown at the 2026 Slamdance Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: What does it mean to cling on when everyone has made up their mind and decided you’re done? THE OLD MAN AND THE PARROT starts with a premise that leads to a punchline, yet quickly develops into something much more delicate. A man breaks into the house of a stranger, armed and carrying a stuffed bird, and he then demands the spirit of his lover to be freed. It could have been the premise of a sketch comedy, yet the film hints from the beginning that it’s not aiming for that. Under its odd workings, there’s a message about grief with no place to go.

This contradiction was embodied in Praxi, a seventy-seven-year-old Cuban ex-comedian and now exile, who's stubborn, theatrical, angry, pained, and insecure. Ruben Rabasa plays Praxi with great attention to detail, as a man whose physical and emotional exhaustion has hardened into a rigidity that the actor was careful not to let tip into stereotype. He uses humor not as a defensive mechanism but as a reflex that keeps him standing even as memory would draw him into himself.

Perhaps the film’s most significant achievement is its use of enchanting realism as an emotional form of communication instead of a visual device. The notion that Yoelvis’ spirit lives inside a stuffed parrot is never presented as a plot point that should be explained or rationalized; it just is, and like grief, absurd, unyielding, and completely subjective. The film recognizes that you don’t require logic to support belief; you just require emotional authenticity.

Praxi’s backstory, revealed through flashbacks, hints that the bond with Yoelvis is no epic love story, but a chain of mutual wishes and unspoken arrangements. The couple hoped to launch a vegan Cuban eatery, which seems more a craving for stability in a world that has viewed them as fleeting. René Lavan gives Yoelvis a cozy, down-to-earth charisma that echoes even during absence.

Serafin Falcon’s Radel is similarly restrained. As a spiritual leader on the verge of a stroke, he’s presented with moral ambiguity that the film never exploits, turning him neither into a villain nor a punchline. His motivations are complex, such as fear, ego, and the subtle corruption of spiritual power. Oftentimes, his silence speaks more than his words.

Ana, played by Isabella Bobadilla, turns out to be the center of the whole film. Though she has every reason to be upset and never forgive Praxi, their relationship is more about confrontation, which comes not by choice but by default, and Ana is the generation’s confrontation with belief, responsibility, and damage passed onto her. Ana is the moral compass that keeps the film grounded in reality when it approaches the surreal. The relationship between Ana and Praxi works particularly well, since both of them start from suspicion and end with the word “understanding.”

The tone of Gabriel de Varona’s direction conveys an assured sense of balance. Comedy and melancholy intertwine and shift from one to another, happening naturally. The humor doesn’t compromise the emotion, and the outbursts of the film’s fantasies never upstage its heart. Holding such a tenuous balance is no easy task, and the film gets away with it for the most part because of its faith in viewers' ability to make emotional leaps without the appropriate context.

The ending doesn’t offer a simple resolution. Holding on is neither shown to be failure, nor is letting go shown to be triumph. The last scene acknowledges the fact that grief doesn’t wrap up with a perfect bow, and even less so when love has been one of the few constants in an experience characterised by mourning and dislocation. The decision Praxi must make is hard-won and evokes empathy.

THE OLD MAN AND THE PARROT is a film that works because it leans into oddity and strangeness without any loss of fidelity to the world it creates. It understands that absurdity and loss go hand in hand, particularly when the themes are aging, exile, memory, and reminiscence. Here is a film that understands the complexities of grief, how it can be funny, repulsive, nonsensical, and completely authentic, sometimes simultaneously.

It’s a confident, sometimes jarring, but ultimately poignant first outing that uses magical realism as a means to be truthful rather than to escape reality. THE OLD MAN AND THE PARROT doesn’t seek to convince its viewers of the existence of curses or imprisoned souls. Rather, it seeks to make its readership acknowledge what it is to love someone so much that you could consider death as something that is rather up for discussion.

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[photo courtesy of COCUYO PRODUCTIONS, WHITE ELEPHANT GROUP]

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