In a prison cell in an unnamed Latin American country, a homosexual (William Hurt in his Oscar winning performance) regales his cellmate (Raul Julia), imprisoned for revolutionary activities against the repressive government, with tales of his favorite movies. Based on the novel by Manuel Puig from a screenplay by Leonard Schrader, the film is a talky affair that is illuminated by its two central performances. It's distracting at first because Hurt is so wrong for the part he's playing. To put it simply, he's just too butch (yes, gay men can be butch but not for
this character). Considering that he's miscast (he and Julia should have traded roles) though, it's a superb performance. Once you can get past Hurt's essential miscasting and it does take a bit, you can appreciate the intricacies and details of his performance even though he's never totally believable. Ironically, the sequences of the film that Hurt narrates (a Nazi propaganda film with Sonia Braga as a French chanteuse collaborating with a Nazi) which he uses as an escape for him and Julia to let them escape from the sordidness and confinement of the prison cell are rather tedious. Instead of pulling us out of the their cell and into fantasy, we just want to back to the cell, it's just more interesting. Sonia Braga playing a movie goddess lacks the genuine presence of a real movie goddess like Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner that would have made the sequences more compelling. Hector Babenco's strong direction keeps us focused.
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