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Review
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Impressive, sensual portrait of Cuban ex-patriat poet
Reinaldo Arenas, based on his memoire of the same name,
which he completed shortly before his suicide while in the
late stages of AIDS in New York City in 1990. Traces his
early life in the countryside, his growth as a writer, his
intensifying conflicts with the Castro regime, his arrests
and his eventual escape to the U.S., where his new life was
somewhat less than the idyllic refuge he had imagined. In
real life, Arenas was somewhat more political than the film
portrays him, possibly because his criticism's of Castro
might be perceived differently if weighed against the
experience of El Savador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and
Guatemala. Well-acted, well-written, and beautifully
filmed, and tragic.
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