I liked this movie, but was consistently frustrated by it as well. Javier Bardem was amazing (and if you haven’t seen “The Sea Inside” yet, run out and rent it right now) as the late writer Reinaldo Arenas who suffered persecution, censorship and prison because of his writings and his homosexuality in Castro Cuba. The film is beautiful and the director Julian Schnabel made a lot of interesting choices that blended Arenas’s writings into the film. I haven’t read Arenas’s work, but I presume that Schnabel was mimicking it with some of the pacing and sequences (such as the cab ride towards the end when Cuba and New York City are spliced together to one of Arenas’s poems).

The film is also kind of known for starring Johnny Depp (in two different roles – a transvestite and a prison guard) and Sean Penn, but I found them to be a little distracting (although Johnny Depp’s transvestite scene was a strong spot in the film).

My main problem with the film was I felt as if I was missing pieces to the puzzle. Maybe I am not poetic enough to relish in a film where I rarely know people’s names, backgrounds are hinted at but not revealed, where even the fact that the author had AIDS at the end was only hinted at. I am sure this ambigious style was intentional, but for me it consistently drew me away from the beauty of the film with nagging questions. It felt as if I was listening to Arenas’s tell his story to his close friends who knew the people and places he referred to, but for me they were strangers. However, many more things worked for the film than worked against it, so I highly recommend it.