By BBC News Online's Olive Clancy. Friday, 15 June, 2001,
18:18 GMT 19:18 UK
Before Night Falls is a brave film in many ways.
It tells the story of the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas from his
ultra-traditional childhood through his embrace of the Cuban revolution to his
persecution as a writer and homosexual under Castro.
Arenas, brilliantly played by Spaniard Javier Bardem who was Oscar-nominated
for his performance, eventually escapes Cuba only to commit suicide in New York
in 1990.
He had AIDS and wrote a suicide letter blaming Castro for his troubles and
his death.
For all the desperation, poverty and persecution on screen, the film is a
compulsive watch.
It is narrated by Bardem in heavily accented English - itself a radical move
- which gives it a quality of foreignness that no subtitle could ever give.
On occasion it is difficult to follow, but it endears the slightly unhinged
Arenas to you.
The voice-over also incorporates Arenas's own work, including poetry.
Considering the gross simplification of historical and personal stories that
Hollywood generally undertakes, supposedly in the name of making them
'accessible' to audiences, it is refreshing to be challenged in this way at the
cinema.
This is a film that celebrates words and artistry without making any
apology.
Neither does the film shirk from the downside of Castro's Cuba - liberation
was not supposed to bring repression with it, but it did.
The film has been picketed by Cuban solidarity groups who claim that it
misrepresents the revolution.
It has also been criticised by enemies of the revolution who say that the
film encourages the US to continue its blockade of Cuba.
But to me the story tells itself.
It may not be the whole truth, but it is Arenas's truth.
Before Night Falls was directed by the painter Julian Schnabel, who also
made a biopic about New York painter Jean Michael Basquiat in 1996.
And it is a painterly film.
Arenas's poverty stricken childhood is portrayed against torrential floods
and voluptuous landscapes.
The revolution comes in cleverly worked archive montage, with hordes full of
Che Guevara look-alikes hanging picturesquely off trucks.
Arenas's sexual adventures with his white-toothed, firm-biceped compatriots
are played out on white rocks by turquoise seas.
He was a voracious sexual predator - he once claimed he had slept with 5,000
men before he was 25.
Unfortunately, not all the brave moves come off in the film.
Johnny Depp plays a bizarre double role as an oppressive army officer who is
the object of Arenas's sexual fantasies and a scantily-clad cross-dresser who
smuggles his writings out of prison.
I was never quite sure what the point was, but Johnny looks a treat in false
eye-lashes and hot pants.
Once Arenas gets to New York the colour seeps from the screen and Arenas
seems to be awaiting death.
He is free but his heart does not seem to be in it.
Before Night Falls is on general release from 15 June
Before Night Falls / The Book by Reinaldo Arenas | 
