Tropic Pathway (2005)

Wonderful Movie

Undescribable Perfection

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Absolutely Brilliant!

It took me a little while to catch on that this movie was about Manuel Puig (famous author).... I thought it was just another gay themed movie about some poor not too attractive 30s something gay man throwing himself at every sex opportunity that might present itself. Once I caught the story it was halfway enjoyable to watch. One hopes there was more to this man than coming on to boys and chumming around with rich fag hags. Unfortunately it is also very believable that this movie depicts exactly how things were in Rio..i.e. a famous lonely boozed up old queen on the prowl(note Puig was in his 50s in Rio--the actor Fabio Aste is considerably younger). One reviewer said Puig was a recluse in Rio--that is diametrically opposite to the extrovert portrayed in this movie...??...When will they make movies about gay men who outsmart the system--are successful don't humiliate themselves etc...make James Bond gay!Over all the movie is a stupid low budget affair but since it was about some one gay of note it is tolerable. One of the amusing low budget items is Puig is driven around in a VW rabbit convertible--could they not afford something better? Actually the movie's low budget and Argentine/Brazilian origin give it some charm.TOLERABLE

The movie is awful. The Rio of January shown in him does not exist, it is a stylized and kitsch vision.The dialogs in Portuguese are so badly written what seems that the script was written in Spanish and then translated in an automatic translator. With the exception of Silvia Buarque, all the Brazilian actors are amateur, and they have the worst acting.There is nothing of interesting one in the history. What we see is only a homosexual without any auto-esteem falling in love for any man who appears in his front.Manuel Puig was deserving to be shown better.

I just watched this movie on Televisión Española and was excited because it was about Manuel Puig, the talented author of "La Traición de Rita Hayworth" and "Boquitas Pintadas" that I enjoyed so much being a teenager but... I am so disappointed with this film! It doesn't capture the personality of Puig (as far as I know, he was terribly funny) and doesn't capture either the creative process he went tr ought, not to say his opinions about literature or movies, which he loved so much. This film focus mainly in his homosexual affairs -boooring actually- without any other context. The dialogs are simple, every day stuff. The characters almost never say anything interesting and at the end of the film, if you haven't read Puig or know nothing about him, you can think its only another silly movie about a frustrated gay guy with a sad and boring life. Its a pity we never know, in this film, other aspects of his life; well, we don't even really know why he choose Mexico to live in! If you want be entertained for a couple of hours you should read the books I mentioned and laugh all the way.

This supposed biography of the famous Argentine writer's last years is flawed and confusing. The film deals with the author's last years in exile in Rio, but with a heavy hand on his sex life. While that may be one of a person's most defining aspects, anyone (and many did) who accompanied his life and work here in Rio, knows the film does not do justice to his life; it does not make sense. This was where KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, just to name one play, first became a hit, and later made into a movie (also here in Brazil, though with American English dialog).One wonders how the author depicted in this film could be the same one who wrote wonderful plays, and socially was pretty much a recluse here, until his death. This view, by the way, has been echoed by the critics who have seen it here at the Rio Film Festival, as part of the Gay World Sidebar. The film itself is not too bad, but the facts aren't straight (pardon the pun).