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Mil nubes de paz cercan el cielo, amor jamás acabarás de ser amor. Dir. Julián Hernández. Mexico, 2003. Dur.: 83 min.
Before the release of Arturo Ripstein's El lugar sin limites (1977), a film based on José Donoso's eponymous novel and co-written by Argentine novelist Maunel Puig, the inclusion of gay characters in Mexican cinema was effectively limited to the cameo appearance of the marica, as seen from early on in La casa del ogro (1938). In this movie, one of the building's residents (christened Doña Pedrita by his neighbors) is immediately identifiable as "queer" through a slight touch of rouge, a thin moustache, a flowery silk dressing gown, and the hyper-effeminate gestures that complete this nineteenth century character "type."
In the same way, Doña Herlinda y su hijo (1985), adapted from the short story by Jorge López Páez, has rightly been considered Mexico's premier gay film, as it is the first to explore the personal and familial relationships of two men in love, while illustrating the impact of this affair on genteel Guadalajara society of the mid-eighties. This relationship is seen through the perspective of the protagonists' own gay subjectivities, thus ending the traditional objectivization of which gays had been traditionally victims by directors and producers alike.
Astonishingly, until the release of Mil nubes de paz cercan el cielo, amor jamas acabaras de ser amor in 2003, Mexican studios produced few other movies that might be considered part of an emerging "gay cinema." Although this might appear to reflect an ominous state of affairs, the inclusion of gays in Mexican films has not only increased dramatically, but has become ever more complex and authentic, far removed from the early representation of the ludicrous loca. There is now an exclusively gay variety show, Desde gayola, and the presence of gay characters even extends to the ultra-conservative world of the telenovela, or...