The place with no limits
Director: Arturo Ripstein
Country: México
Year: 1977
Script: Arturo Ripstein, based on the homonym novel of Jose Donoso
Production: Francisco del Villar
Actors: Roberto Cobo, Lucha Villa, Ana Martin, Gonzalo Vega, Fernando Soler
Time: 103 min.
The story is about a brothel in a town, in which live Manuela, a transgender woman and Japanese, her daughter, both in charge of the house of dates. Their life was alterable with the appearance of Pancho that had threatened Manuela. This is an excellent cinematographic adaptation of a novel that don’t follow the book if not created a whole new world in the screen, less terrible that the world of Donoso.
But the situation that characters life is very dramatic, violent and sad. There are many social problems presented in the film, but we want to talk about sexual identities and masculinities. Manuela is a transgender because she lives permanent in the other gender, as a woman, even though she kept his masculine sexual organs, that is the reason of how she could have a daughter, against her will, in order to be the owner of the house in which is working the brothel.
Manuela is a good person, frightened, delicate and with a poor character, she continue the image of a servile woman but she is courage when is necessary, as the moment when she give the face to Pancho. Between Pancho and Manuela, sexual attraction is mix with repulsion and fire. Pancho is the typical man that use violence and force to legitimate himself, he hire his attraction to Manuela because he had threatened Manuela but he also desire her. Something in Manuela seduce him, maybe just that condition of her identity, but aversion is stronger than desire because of the social demand of heterosexuality.
Each one had their own hell and even though Ripstein didn’t resolve the interiority of this characters, he show conflicts and chaos inside them because of the sexuality. It is our homework, as a spectator, resolves these questions about identity and desire.
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More information
http://cinemexicano.mty.itesm.mx/peliculas/lugar.html
http://www.geocities.com/cinemexicano100/79lugarsinlimites.html
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