Carla: Thais Valdes	Cesar: Nacho Lugo
Cunda: Daisy Granados	Concha: Veronica Lopez
Prof. Calzado: Luis Manuel Iglesias	Director: Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti

30-second bottom line: A postal worker brightens her dull existence by opening letters, and changing the contents to make other people happy. A new postmaster becomes suspicious and is intent on putting the clerk in jail.

Story Line: Carla (Thais Valdes) is a woman in her 20's who works in a Havana Post Office, with the boring job of stamping postmarks on envelopes. She's been at the post office for five years and the atmosphere is so tight that small talk, such as "how are you doing?" or "the weather is nice today," does not occur.

Being inquisitive about the contents of the letters turns into an obsession that forces Carla to open letters and change the contents. Now, a lonely person looking for a positive response from an otherwise non-responsive person receives a letter rewritten to be just what the doctor ordered.

Carla has no personal life and if something doesn't change, she is an old maid in waiting. Her parents are in the US and she is on the list for a visa that will allow her to legally leave Cuba. If and when it comes, should she go? She is not angry about living in Cuba and is unsure if life in the US will be an improvement. Different is not necessarily better.

Professor Calzado (Luis Manuel Iglesias) has a TV program, where he pontificates on his psychiatric theories to an uncaring audience. He comes to the post office looking for fan mail, only to find an empty PO box. This sends him into a rage, as he believes that if he has no mail it's not because none has been sent, but that the post office personnel is incompetent in its ability to do its job. Carla opens the one piece he eventually receives and it reads "your show stinks." Knowing that this will crush him, she writes him letters that lift his spirits. However, only when the fragile professor has a mental breakdown on live TV does he get a large volume of genuine mail. It seems that people react to the real thing as opposed to dry theories and made up Dear Abby type advice.

Mail carrier Cesar (Nacho Lugo) wants no part of Carla's scheme, but she uses her sexuality to get his attention. After Cunda (Daisy Granados), the new postmaster is brought in to replace the former zany leader, who was clearly incompetent, she starts spying on employees, inspecting pocketbooks before they leave the office and even makes surprise visits to their homes. Aided by assistant Concha (Veronica Lopez), an over-the-top postal worker, Cunda soon has figured out what Carla is doing.

Tell me more about it: "Nothing More" reminds me of Yimou Zhang's Chinese films, "Ju Dou" and "Raise the Red Lantern," with their multi layered political messages hidden from the watchful eye of a communist government. Presented as a comedy, the film addresses how Cuban officials can intercede into one's personal life to an extent that, theoretically, would not happen in the US. Yet, even when Carla eventually gets her visa to travel to the US, will she leave Cuba now that she's finally found a new love in her homeland? Besides, the US is not her country. Where is the greatest measure of happiness to be found?

"Nothing More" slips in moments of poetic contemplation, which keeps you wondering where the film is going. A dying person evokes the thought that it's important to "make every moment eternal" and that one "should never stay in the same place." Cesar is a mail carrier that has never written a letter, who one day is motivated to pen his first piece of mail and writes, "the air you breath is what I miss."

An artistic style that is at times MTV-like, mixed with sepia tone cinematography and sharp flashes of color (e.g., a full color Tiffany lamp in an otherwise black and white scene), and you are always paying attention to the screen.

Racial politics are touched upon, as a white woman has dreams of a black man who she's not sure is her religious savior or a potential rapist. Is what stirs her a denial of the fact that many, most or all whites in Cuba have some black in them? This is pertinent, as this topic was discussed in a recent NPR report, on who is white or black in Brazil today. When it comes to college admissions policies for established quotas, there seems to be a lot of confusion as to racial identity. However, when it comes to who gets hired, folks don't have trouble knowing who is white. Likewise, the police don't seem to have trouble knowing who is black with respect to who gets arrested.

"Nada Mas" is rare in that it's a film with lots of sub plots that are not directly related to the primary message. This does not detract from its comedic entertainment. As a debut film for Malberti, this film leaves no doubt that he has more ideas and that he will make even better films in the future.