Strong and Moving!

Fresh and Exciting

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film has been shown in some festivals, but we don't think it had a commercial run in this country. We caught with it recently on DVD format. The movie, directed by Francisco Lombardi, is based on the novel by television personality and writer, Jaime Bayly, with an adaptation by Giovanna Pollarolo. The film is a frank account on the Peruvian society.It's clear from the start that Joaquin is gay. He has been sheltered by his mother, against his father's wishes. As a way to initiate the young boy in a the typical Peruvian man's world, Luis Felipe, the father, decides to take him hunting, with no good results. Then, the father takes the young man to one of Lima's best house of ill repute, an experience that ends badly.Joaquin likes Alejandra, the young college student. She feels the attraction as well, but Joaquin has an eye for attractive guys. When Gonzalo and Rocio appear at a disco, Joaquin feels attracted to the hunky young man. It's clear Gonzalo is also interested in Joaquin and thus begins their sexual involvement that will not produce the results either one expected. Gonzalo wants to keep seeing Joaquin, but wants to marry Rocio, but Joaquin, in a fit of anger confesses to the young woman her fiancé is having an affair with him and they Gonzalo leaves him.The movie is a complex character study about the duality most of these rich young men of the upper crust of the Peruvian society and how they feel about casual gay sex. In a society dominated by the machismo, they must hide away in a married life that is a cover up for the way homosexuality is concealed.The film is honest in the way it deals with this subject. Santiago Magill makes Joaquin credible in his appealing performance. Lucia Jimenez is also good as Alejandra, the girl that loved him. Christian Meier plays the closeted Gonzalo. Giovanni Ciccia's take on the troubled rich boy Alfonso is right. The rest of the cast does an excellent job in portraying all the upper class people in the movie.Francisco Lombardi directed with panache this story about a taboo in that type of society.

There's a surprising use of nudity and sex (both het and homo) in a movie from Peru, even if the money was from Spain.Good leads. Seemingly honest portrayal of the difficulty of living ones own life, instead of the one expected of you by parents, friends, and society.It proves you can have your cake and eat it too, but at some dreadful costs.

I didn´t like this movie, because of the malicious intention of a reaction in the public, based in a cheap exploitation of homosexualism. Using great actors, with the excuse that an actor has to do whatever the screenplay says, and doing scenes that went against they will, only for the pleasure of the director.Maybe the producer and director wanted to scandal the audience using unnecessary scenes, that didn´t contribute to the plot. On the other hand, the deletion of those graphic scenes, would have made a great movie, because the intention of the book writer, was to show the subtext behind homosexual behavior, not the behavior itself.P.S. I use to watch Jaime Baily´s TV show every night, and once a caller asked him if he was gay, and he responded no. When he wrote the book, he also said that was not an autobiography. So, I don´t know why a commenter said the opposite. The answers are in the recorded video tapes of his show.

It's a shame this movie, showcased at the February 1999 Miami Film Festival to a sold out crowd of almost 2,000, has not been distributed outside its home territory of Peru. To North Americans and Europeans, it is only another coming out story, but for Latin America, it's a break out film, based on a break out novel (Read it. Its ending is not compromised for commercial reasons as the film's ending is.)