The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

It's not a good thing when a movie reminds one of Forrest Gump, which is on my list of execrable films of all time.
Once again, we sat through three hours of pointless vanity. The idea of growing young, starting old and becoming a baby, is totally fascinating. However, it is totally wasted in this empty film which decides to be instead about a mythical love story from childhood between Brad Pitt, not acting enough, and Cate Blanchett, acting way too much.
Somebody like Charlie Kaufman could have done marvels playing mind games with this concept. Unfortunately, David Fincher just goes through the motions. All the energy of the movie seems to have been channeled into digital effects and the result is utterly lifeless.
I am not a huge fan of Fincher's movies, not of Seven, or of Fight Club or of Zodiac. His penchant for yellow exhausts me, but I would have welcomed some of the nasty edge of his other movies.
This is just pointless, empty fakeness.
If you must sit through it, the one kick you will get is watching Tilda Swinton breathe life and intelligence into the film. She rules.

On DVD: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

I wanted to see for myself what this notorious 70's movie was about.
It's fantastic. It is a biting satire, a little clunky, very brutal, slyly funny and also charming and endearing and incredible. How did films like this get made? Now everything feels like product.
1.
I am utterly, desperately, tragically in love with Elliott Gould as he appears in this movie. The hottest, smartest, cutest Jew ever. And what an actor. There is an amazing, brutal scene between him and the fantastic Dian Cannon, who plays Alice, his wife, in which he wants to have sex and she doesn't. It is probably the truest scene of perverse marriage dynamics in the history of film and it is flawlessly executed. So after a give and take of almost Ionesquian proportions, she finally relents and tells him to give her the contraceptive pills. The look of boyish triumph in Elliot Gould's face encapsulates what volumes could be written about male sexuality in a single smile. I think it should be sent to outer space in one of those capsules they send trying to explain the human race to aliens.
This is a guy who never ever looked like he was acting. The most charming, effortless being in front of a camera. Ever. How cute was he. I can't bear it.
2.
Natalie Wood was not only extraordinarily beautiful, she was charming and lovely and fantastic and she carries the movie with poise and grace and intelligence.
3.
It's funny that in those days people were already into the new agey mumbo jumbo that has become a multimillion dollar industry these days but in those days you had to go to Esalen to practice tai chi and get into horrifying group hugs with total fucked up strangers .
The human body in the seventies was in great shape, but men did not look ripped and women did not look muscular and emaciated at the same time. They had lovely violin curves and great, toned legs that didn't look like they belong to the Terminator.
One misses the seventies, where people were far more passionate about everything. They demonstrated against Nixon, they did a lot of drugs, they wore ridiculous clothes with great panache, they were out there. Now it's like we're living in Stepford. We have been lobotomized.

Best and Worst Films of 2008: The Return

It's that time of year again when we remember the countless hours we spent rapturously at the movies. I may add to this list as the Holiday break affords me more time to go to the movies.

Best of the Best

The Class by Laurent Cantet
Hunger by Steve McQueen
Happy Go Lucky by Mike Leigh
The Headless Woman by Lucrecia Martel
Let The Right One In
Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman
Encounters at the End of the World by Werner Herzog
Rififi! by Jules Dassin
Man on Wire

Good Films

Gomorrah
The Wrestler
Milk
A Christmas Tale

Decent Films

W.
I've Loved You so Long
Let It Rain by Agnes Jaoui
Stepbrothers
Jellyfish

Better than Expected

The Duchess
Vicky Christina Barcelona (no great shakes, though)
Doubt
La Zona

Films I wish I liked more

Revolutionary Road
Religulous
Appaloosa
24 City
Tony Manero
Wendy and Lucy

Way Overhyped

Rachel Getting Married
Tell No One
Nick and ... Excellent Playlist (a total waste of time)

Meh

Burn After Reading

Pretentious Bores

Che
Synecdoche NY
Bullet in the Head

Dreck mit Kabebe

Slumdog Millionaire
I'm Going to Explode
Righteous Kill (De Niro and Pacino in a dud)
Un Mundo Maravilloso
Bullet in the Head

Didn't Bother

The Dark Knight
Anything with or by Clint Eastwood
Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Che: or Guerilla Warfare is a Pain in the Ass

Mr. Ex-Enchilada used to hate movies that made him waste his time. Once, I saw him leave a movie before the opening credits were over. I never understood how a movie wasted your time. Even if it is awful, there is always something to learn. Thus, I can tolerate a lot of time-wasting crap.
And so I stayed for the 4.5 hours of excruciating, unforgivable boredom that is Che, the revolutionary vanity project from Benicio del Toro and Steven Soderbergh, both of whom should have their heads examined. I freaking stayed for the closing credits only to find that there aren't any. This is the only time in my moviegoing history where I've felt I irretrievably lost almost five hours of precious life. I'm still mourning them. I will never forgive myself.
Three days later, I'm still wondering what's the point. For this is not a film. It is a history lesson in the life of a saint. And what could be more mindnumbingly boring than that? This Che is a virtuous, solemn character who has no other personal traits than unwavering virtue and a soft spot for the downtrodden. Every single time he opens his mouth he spews out revolutionary slogans.
Somebody asks him "How is Cuba?" and he answers: "progressing". Not gorgeous, not infuriatingly sui generis, not lovely and lush and fucked up. Virtue is so boring. And boredom in film is an unforgivable, cardinal sin.
I wanted Che to fart, laugh at a joke, lose his temper with Fidel (a wonderfully cartoony turn by Demián Bichir), be a womanizer, have moral doubts, burp once in a while, but no. There he is crossing the Sierra Maestra for two hours and a half, choking with asthma, and then he's stuck in the Bolivian forest for another two hours and a half, in the idiotic revolutionary misadventure that cost him his life and the lives of those who followed him into it. And during the course of this time nothing changes in him. He ministers to the sick and the poor like St. Francis of Assisi. He teaches his soldiers math and reading. He is like a benevolent father, a human god who metes out fair military justice. He reads books in the shade while the Cubans joke around. He shakes every single peasants' hand. He is not of this world. Apparently, he indeed was a singleminded virtuous guy, but then this is not the stuff of drama. It's the stuff of t-shirts.
There are many battles but there is no suspense. According to this movie guerrilla warfare is a hurry up and wait kind of gig. In Cuba, it is not clear how Fidel and his mangy band of soldiers won that war, although the movie makes clear that Fidel was the military strategist (and cabrón extraordinaire). Actually, a collateral damage of this film is that you end up loathing Che and admiring Fidel. At least, he's still there, the invincibly shrewd motherfucker. He got rid of all the competition (this is not something you learn from the film). He sent romantic Che to Bolivia, and he offed the charismatic Camilo Cienfuegos, who is actually the best thing in the movie. I'm actually going into imdb right now to find out who is the actor who plays him. He was the only thing that brought the film to life. Just found out: Venezuelan heartthrob Santiago Cabrera, in a star making turn.
The audience, who clapped at the sight of the Cuban map as the movie began, and who clapped at the end of the film, laps it all up. It's like nuns at an audience with the Pope. For Che is one engorged human legend who can bring out the faithful. And what is more naive and sentimental and basic and pathetic (and boring) than unquestioning worship, particularly of the political kind? I have always had tremendous distaste (and seething contempt) for the cloying, sentimental, inhuman kitsch of the far left. I think it is disgraceful that this movie takes that route.
Steven Soderbergh is an extremely competent filmmaker. The movie was shot with the RED camera and it looks gorgeous. He is his own DP. His framing is exquisite. But where is the writing? Where is the internal conflict? Where are the antagonists? The only antagonist is American Imperialism, who is a rather wooden actor, if you ask me. Because of this lack of drama, I don't know if trimming the film to half of its length could even work.
But the worst feeling is that of still not knowing what the hell is this movie about or what is its purpose? Other than getting methody Benicio, sporting an untraceable accent, but speaking more clearly than ever, a nomination, beats me.

Rachel Getting Married

I found this much hyped film quite a disappointment. Some people are saying it's among the best movies of the year. If that is the case, we really have lowered our expectations way too much. It gets brownie points for presenting a very unsympathetic central character, Kym, (a solid performance by Anne Hathaway) and a new American film family that is prescient about the recent relaxation of our racial prejudices. And most of all, for bringing back Debra Winger, who is amazing and looks amazing (no surgery) after all these years. However, its sins are greater than its virtues.
For a much more satisfying dysfunctional family circus you should check out Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale. Much more bite, much more intelligence and much less artificially stacking up the deck. Rachel Getting Married is one of those movies that thinks the audience needs to be hit over the head with a fondue set in order to wring emotion out of us. It's DRAMAH, overwrought and undignified, like Americans like it.
Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) is getting married and her sister Kym is leaving rehab to attend the three day liberal P.C. orgy that makes one want to decamp to Alaska and start pallin' around with Sarah Palin. I would like to think that this self-satisfied, self-indulgent wedding affair (bridesmaids wearing saris, a folksy wedding band from hell) are screenwriter Jenny Lumet's secret fantasy to tear on the absurdity of weddings and the insufferability of certain enlightened liberals. To Jonathan Demme's credit, the entire wedding megillah is as excrutiating to sit through as the real thing. The bride is one of those people who want to be really special, so she makes sure everything about her wedding is not like any other wedding on Earth. Homey, folksy, new agey, world musicky (stop if you are feeling nauseous). She is marrying a saintly Black musician. While the sisters in the brides' camp bicker and fight and every skeleton comes out of the closet of their white, coddled dysfunctional nest, the only thing missing from the groom's side are halos and angel wings. Not that we want to see The Sharks v. The Jets, but I find such blanket movie stereotypes very disturbing. It would not have killed anyone to add a little bit of complicated humanity or bite to these nice, sweet people. A little bit of slight racial tension. It would have been more true to life.
The writing is extremely heavy handed. It just so happens that Rachel is studying psychology so she can better dissect her sister's problems. There is no need to stack the deck like that, with her actually opening a textbook to harangue her sister. Everyone knows that in every single family everybody else is always a certified closet shrink.
The people in this movie are so self absorbed and unlikeable, particularly the bride, that I really was praying for rain on the wedding day. It doesn't help that the father who spawned these two girls is the soppy and sappy and totally miscast Bill Irwin.
There is a scene about a dishwasher loading contest between the father of the bride and the groom, which is one of the most cringe inducing things I've ever seen. It's hard to decide whether the filmmakers intended this as sarcasm about these insufferably corny liberals, as it's followed by Bill Irwin dissolving into grief at the sight of a melamine plate belonging to his dead son. How did someone as sharp and hot as Debra Winger get married to him? Certainly, the two self-involved girls would have benefited from some tough love. As it is, apparently they've grown up to be high-maintenance selfish brats, (each one in her own way). The rivarly and the strain between the sisters is believable. The toast that Kym gives at the rehearsal dinner is not. Even a fucked up person like that, particularly a sober one, would know when to shut her trap, all the while trying to contain the damage. But the movie is unrestrained in its efforts to make it all as emotionally harrowing as possible and it all ends sounding like a dramatization of a Dr. Phil episode.
I'm starting to realize, too late perhaps, that subtlety has never been a virtue in much demand in American films.
Meanwhile, this movie made me think back of Catherine Deneuve coolly smoking one cigarette after another as she is informed of having a devastating and rare form of cancer. She coolly tells her fucked up son, the great Mathieu Amalric, that she never really loved him and she doesn't now. They exchange pointed postprandial poisons as each one takes a drag of their respective fags. No one raises their voice, yet this scene is so chilling, I still get goosebumps just thinking about it. In contrast, in Rachel Getting Married we get a scene of mother and daughter actually decking each other, screaming and crying and tearing their hair out in a most unseemly way. Instead of working on our hearts, with its cheap psychology of guilt, it works on our last nerve.

On DVD: Inland Empire

I'm not a fan of David Lynch, but I admire some of the ways in which he is talented.
Whether one likes his films or not, the guy has created a very influential visual style that is uniquely his own. He is our arty purveyor of American Gothic. I can't think of another filmmaker who is capable of filming the imagery of dreams and nightmares as uncannily and realistically as Lynch. His movies are like dreamscapes and some of his imagery is extremely powerful, almost totemic, and deeply disturbing, as it does not come from a rational, logical place, but from primitive, scary places in the soul. The downside of this unique vision is that his movies are almost parodies of themselves, and none so much and so infuriatingly as Inland Empire.
I loathe video. Video looks like shit, I don't care what anybody says. For video not to look like shit, you need a genius DoP and lots of lighting.
Lynch shot Inland Empire on video and it looks like crap. He claims to love it, no doubt because it gave him economic freedom; it's much less unwieldy than film. Some of his most disturbing images also benefit from the crappiness of video. However, if you want to watch this film at home, you better have a good TV. The movie is dark, horribly lit, everyone looks flat.
Gone are the gorgeous palettes of films like Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks. Alas.
I saw this movie over the course of four nights. I would fall asleep, wake up, rewind to the last point I remembered and fall asleep again in the same place. The movie follows no lineal chronology or temporal logic that I could surmise. It is basically like Alice (Laura Dern, a fearless actress) falling down the rabbit hole for mentally disturbed grown ups. It also seems to have something to do with acting and with Hollywood, but beats me trying to figure it out. This topic is not as approachable as in Mulholland Drive, a movie I really like.
I totally respect Lynch's commitment to experimentation. Yet I don't understand why this film needs to last three hours. Why are people speaking in Polish? Who are the young girls? Why are people wearing Rabbit heads? Why are the actors so wooden? Why ask why?
I loved some of the weird imagery. Lynch is a master of the bizarre, disturbing atmosphere. Plus anything that boasts of Harry Dean Stanton, who delivers the speech of a Hollywood schnorrer that should make the hair on your neck stand up, is worth seeing in my book. But the movie seems pointless, longwinded, boring, pretentious and gratuitous. As always there is violence and vulgarity and perverted sex (although you don't really see it, it's there).
My mom would say that Lynch is "enfermo de talento". Sick with talent. And even though I strive to be more charitable and openminded, in this case, I think she'd be right on.

The Duchess

In short: a fabulous feminist bodice ripper, if you can imagine such a thing. I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, 'cause I didn't expect much. But Keira Knightley gives a spirited performance as Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire, married to a very obtuse Duke, played by Ralph Fiennes, an actor never afraid of playing unsympathetic characters quite unsympathetically. And even so, his Duke is not a mustache twirling villain, but a dull, blunt, inarticulate, boorish man who is used to his way or the highway. Yet Fiennes finds some pained sympathy in the brute. La Knightley rises to the challenge with surprising skill. She is so much better in this movie than in Atonement; she is turning into a resourceful actress. It also helps she has the face of a movie star, gorgeous, but not always perfectly perfect. The camera loves her. The costumes are divine, the movie feels like being inside a luscious wedding cake, and it is a classic, smart chick flick with unrequited passions and a good female character and heartbreaking pain. I must confess I cried (and was so surprised the movie got to me, I immediately started looking for reasons, was it pms, was I ovulating, or was it the lovely music by Rachel Portman?).
Apparently, this celebrated woman, who was a wit and a proto-feminist, is an ancestor of Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. The movie has the infinite good taste not to mention this, though some of the particulars of both women's loveless marriages resonate nicely. However, it seems Georgianna was a far more interesting, independent creature than the vulgar modern version we got.
The Duke marries Georgianna so he can have a male heir. She gives him 2 daughters and two stillborn boys and he keeps blaming her for the mistake. Of course, through her endless pregnancies Keira Knightley mantains her hourglass figure and her elfin beauty intact, and I would have wished that they showed what it meant for this woman to give birth in those days (not necessarily with the cliche of a woman screaming at childbirth, just a bit less glamour).
In those days they didn't know about chromosomes and men kept women down, down, down with their idiotic notions of honor and virtue, which were nothing but means to control and oppress women. As is still the case in way too many places on Earth.

Beaufort

This impressive Israeli film by Joseph Cedar is a fine war movie and I think a strong indictment of the status quo in Israel, where everybody is a soldier and the State seems to think there is an endless supply of young people willing to sacrifice for their country, no matter what. Except that in some situations, like the recent Lebanon invasion, it's not clear what they are doing it for, or if it is worth it. This is the first time I see Israeli soldiers complaining that they are treated like cannon fodder. After all, Everybody, men and women, is a soldier in Israel and Israel needs an Army to defend itself from its neighbors, not from distant enemies. It has not seen peace since it was born, so to see soldiers questioning their raison d'etre is extremely powerful.
There is an amazing speech in the movie, given on TV by the father of a dead soldier, in which he says he doesn't hold the Army responsible for the death of his son. He feels responsible because as a father, he should not have let the boy out of his sight. He should have protected his children. In essence, this is one of the most moving, powerful indictments of Israel's defense predicament I have seen. The country is putting its children in harm's way and it is not clear anymore that there is a good reason for it.
Beaufort is not a conventional war movie in that there are really no battles, there is little violence, but when it comes, it's brutal. A group of Israeli soldiers is stuck on top of a mountain in Lebanon with an ancient fort from the time of the Crusades. They have built their own state of the art fort next door, and keep adding cement to protet themselves. They are getting shelled by mortars and missiles from Hezbollah, trapped by so many mines they can't get out. Holding the fort, literally. They are in some sort of limbo, waiting for the government to give the order to evacuate southern Lebanon, after intense pressure by public opinion. And we see their days of waiting, their bittersweet camaraderie, their huge stretches of boredom punctuated by explosions they are almost blasé about until they really start striking the targets and some of them are killed. They feel isolated and forgotten, and they are.
Some of them bristle and revolt, others are gripped by fear. It is a claustrophobic, intense film, but told with a certain philosophical gentleness, and with flashes of cinematic poetry, of the dry, unadorned kind, yet it is very suspenseful. Their young commander, Liraz, (an amazing performance by Oshri Cohen), seems arrogant and distant from his men. He is brash and almost reckless and in the course of events, he behaves both heroically and cowardly. Human, flawed and the lives of his men depend on him. He makes mistakes that cost people's lives. But he is relentless. He doesn't want to retreat and abandon Beaufort, even as his soldiers are relieved and happy about going home. He is a proud and stubborn fighter and he doesn't always make sense. I'm still trying to figure him out.
At the end of the film, we see him crossing the border into Israel. He starts peeling away all the military gear that covers him and protects him, making him some sort of superman. He takes layer after layer off, like an onion, until in his fatigues he suddenly looks much smaller and frailer. And then he falls on his knees and cries his heart out.
The whole movie is like an extended metaphor for Israel's situation. Holding the fort, using might, making enormous human sacrifices, cut off from the rest of the world. The fight seems futile, tired and absurd. The film does not show the enemy or Israel's treatment of it. Its revolt is quiet but deep. It goes deep into motives, and into the question of the state's existence. Is this how Israel is going to live always? Isolated from a normal life, always fighting, always eating its young?
I am haunted by this film.

Reviews of Previews and of Movies I Refuse to See

Doubt
This preview is probably better than the movie. The movie, to judge from the preview, looks much better than the play, which I thought was a conventional piece in no way deserving of all the prizes, despite some terrific acting from Cherry Jones and Bryan F. O'Byrne. The preview of Doubt shows La Streep in all her icy glory, it has a nice taut pace and it gives you a hint of the moral dilemma. And it makes you want to watch the movie, but mostly because it happens to have Meryl Streep playing a nasty nun. Streep v. Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I bet she kicks his ass.
I have been watching this preview for so long that I swear the first time I saw it, the footage had not been color corrected. The color of the walls was like Pepsodent. Now they have a nice, dark green. Go Roger Deakins!

Revolutionary Road
In contrast, this much hyped film by Sam Mendes, whom I adore, with his wife Kate Winslet and Leo Di Caprio, has probably one of the worst previews in history. It looks like the climax of a Mexican telenovela but with blond people. There are just too many scenes with people crying their eyes out, and almost tearing their hair out. La Winslet keeps looking better and better, more alluring, mature and sexy. Di Caprio, sorry to say, still looks like a kid. He is a very resourceful actor but I wish he lost the baby face. My friend Katya says the pic is good, despite the preview.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
You know how I feel about Holocaust movies that are made expressly to win Oscars. They should be illegal. We are meant to believe that a little Nazi spawn and a Jewish kid on the other side of the barbed wire become friends over a game of chess. Not even David Thewlis can dignify this crap.

The New Movie with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts
I was so busy staring at these two and their charming chemistry in the preview, I didn't catch the name of the movie, except it was written and directed by Tony Gilroy, he of Michael Clayton, and it looks like a more fun version of that film. The two stars seem to be having fun (Clive Owen always does, bless his soul). Bonafide movie stars having a ball. I would see it.

Reviews of Movies I Won't See.

Zack and Miri make a Porno.
I don't get Kevin Smith. I don't get why people think he is such a genius and I particularly don't get that everybody is saying that Judd Apatow owes him his very existence in a Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence kind of way. Like without Clerks there would be no Superbad. Whatevs. Apatow, in my view, is much more talented and sophisticated than this lazy slacker with his lazy slacker films. I saw Smith talk at the IFP project last Summer and he is very funny, but his movies suck.

Australia
I didn't love Moulin Rouge. Absolutely nothing in it made any sense or had any meaning beyond decoration. I found it extremely vulgar. Over the top extravanganzas of kitsch are not for me. So this extended commercial for Down Under, with its two most handsome exports, I have absolutely no interest in seeing. I hear it is terrible too.

Quantum of Solace
A title that sounds like a metaphysical treaty. And we love our Daniel Craig, the long suffering, humorless spy who looks like a million bucks in swim trunks and tuxedos. But endless explosions bore me to tears and not even Matthieu Amalric as the meanie makes me want to bother.

Got Milk

I can't decide whether Gus Van Sant's choice of a traditional biopic for his Harvey Milk movie is radical or exactly the opposite, although I am veering towards the radical. This is a far cry from My Own Private Idaho. It is a classic, epic Hollywood biopic that happens to be about a gay hero. There is no need to bathe it in outsider style. The man was an American hero and should be celebrated as such. A radical notion.
What is very interesting is that the movie comes out right after the pathetic disaster of Prop 8 in California and makes it even more pathetic. The movie chronicles the gay rights fight and it looks like it's been 30 years and some has changed, but not enough. This movie alone should make the entire state of California ashamed. On the other hand, it is frightening to see that this fight seems to move forward in extraordinarily slow increments. The fact that there was even a prop 8 in this day and age in California is totally disheartening.
As for the movie itself, the one thing that redeems it from being an entirely conventional biopic, radical or not, is the gorgeous, generous performance of Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. There are other wonderful performances in the movie, most notably James Franco and Emile Hirsch, and as always, Josh Brolin (this guy is GOOD). And the always fantastic Dennis O'Hare playing a hateful right wing senator from California as a total closeted queen. But Penn is amazing and not because he goes gay or kisses guys in the mouth, but because he channels with every inch of his macho being the warmth and passion and spirit and charm of the original. When Penn flirts with Franco and looks in his eyes (in a subway station), the desire and the longing, the flirtatiousness are all there. One look at footage of the real Harvey Milk beaming is enough to know that Penn does not possess half of his charm or benign charisma (I would have thought Hank Azaria a dead ringer, if Hollywood was a fair place). But Penn finds it and bestows it generously: humor, gentleness, determination, passion, charm. Charm! Some of his best scenes are the ones with James Franco (gay and straight can agree on this: he is one cute, talented mofo), for they both have a wonderful chemistry together. I was very moved by this chemistry. There was more chemistry and tenderness between these two male actors than in hundreds of movies about men and women, and for that, I salute them.
The movie is framed by Milk recounting his story, leaving it on tape in case somebody kills him, and on those quiet moments of reflection, Penn is as intense and committed as when he is rallying the crowds or having intimate moments with other characters. He is a great actor not only because of the physical affectations and the undeniable showmanship, but of his total emotional commitment. It is a lovely, towering performance.
He will be nominated for an Oscar and he should win only to add further shame and disgrace to the state of California and the rest of the Union.
This being a conventional film, Van Sant smartly decides to show love and relationships instead of wild sex. For the most part, these gays behave in an almost saintly manner. There is none of their fabled, debauched ways. It is a film designed to enlighten the masses (good luck!), not to preach to the choir.
Yet to watch Penn and Franco kissing passionately, and with meaning, is not only enough but right.
The film, is as entertaining and predictable as all biopics. Van Sant uses a lot of real footage and distresses some of his new footage to look old. The actors all do a splendid job. I have one nit and that concerns my charming, talented and brave compatriot Diego Luna, who plays Milk's Latino unhinged lover. Luna is very sweet and funny and mercurial, and it is entirely possible that the actual character was a needy Latin drama queen. They exist indeed. But there was something really stereotypical about him that bothered me. He makes enchiladas and he watches soaps. Not the actor's fault, but the writer's.
I was wondering if this film ever reaches Mexico 1) what the title is going to be, because it can't be Leche. 2) what are my benighted countrymen going to think of their national acting treasure portraying such a committed fairy. I had horrid arguments with some "intellectuals" who vociferously complained about and made fun of the homoeroticism of Y tu mamá también so I don't expect much has changed.
David Denby says Penn is brave. I say all the actors in this film are brave, and isn't it tragic that they should be considered brave for portraying gay people, but among the very brave is Diego Luna.