Smile Orange

Don't like Jamaica oh no

I love her

I have only seen a handful of films filmed and set in Jamaica, and while THE HARDER THEY COME is the most widely known and emblematic, 1976's SMILE ORANGE is at least a close second, and possibly even more honest.   Jamaican cinema is just that - check out the 1982 drama COUNTRYMAN sometime.  Caricature is stripped away to show what breathes beneath the tourist advertising.  Caribbeans just trying to survive another day.  Indentured workers and citizens treated like animals by their own government, one certainly tipping its hat to the Americans.

But some are "chasing the dollar bill", conning and hustling those clueless mainlanders looking for a fantasy, a resort sequestered from the poverty and instability just kilometers away.  It's only become moreso in the decades since writer/director Trevor Rhone's film was released.  People like Ringo (Carl Bradshaw, who also appeared in THE HARDER THEY COME), a waiter at a pleasant but somewhat seedy Montgeo Bay resort who play the confidence game at every opportunity.   He's a liar, cheat, swindler.  But damned charming.  He tiptoes out of his house in the early morning so his wife and brothers-in-law won't catch him jacking their car, one he'll use to pick up a hitchhiker who has a boyfriend but will still end up naked with him in a waterfall.

Our hero will also hoodwink his manager at the hotel, whose wife is making it with the gardener (and Ringo, too). But the manager mistreats his staff, and in a well performed scene of discomfort acts like a plantation owner while Ringo asks him a few favors.   The workers at the hotel are exploited, but some exploit right back.   Some will get comeuppance; others will get away with indirect murder.  Some, both.  Ringo schools a young busboy whose brains work at quarter speed and speech has a lisp in the art of seduction of nubile female guests, though not the Brits ("too repressed").  Sure, sex is great, but at the end of the day, you gotta get their cash, mon.  Or else you starve.

That lengthy scene is also well acted and potent, and is also the only one to reveal the stage origins of the material.  Rhone's film is somewhat crude technically but nonetheless achieves a certain modest cinematic flair, with plenty of island atmosphere.  There are some relevant statements on race, class, and politics.  SMILE ORANGE strikes a cozy balance between lighthearted comedy (though some of the sexual innuendos are really cheesy) and a more serious examination of how the countrymen/women are victims of something, perhaps slaves in many senses of the word.  And in a curious repeated motif, can't even swim.  The movie is quite engaging and worth seeking out.