Before Night Falls

Extraordinary life. Spanish language. Johnny Depp in drag. Johnny Depp as a police officer with a big mustach. Well...the film actually has very little to do with Johnny Depp and yet just his presence as a colorful dragqueen AND as a strict police officer leaves quite an impression on me. I barely recogized Sean Penn! That was a good thing. Cuban country boy discovers his artistic talent and sexual preferences as he moves from countryside to medium size city to big city. From freedom and childhood to adulthood, fame and prisons. The cuban revolution's darkness surprises me and horrifies me. The gay poets and their circle of friends expanding and back stabbing. The story moves with the beauty of the spanish language and the radiant colorful shots. Underwater, water, the sky. Havanna appears a bohemian heaven as the revlution and its threats comes closer and finally crush the dream. The escape from the native country is the movie's lowpoint....the USA doesn't seem the place for him and the aging sick once so strong and fearful poet now sinks deeper into misery. Why not end the film before it all got so bad? The end was too slow, it was unneccessary. NYC didn't have the colors to match the poet's Cuban's life. His soul was dead before he was dead.

http://www.before-night-falls.com/frameset.html

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247196/