Before

Before

Night

Falls shows

at The

Theatre

H

1 &

By Joanns Hiuy

and

Falls,

Julian

Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas was trouble for Fidel Castro. A writ* «r, he obeyed only his ima| tion. A homosexual, he foll< his longings without hesitai tion. Before Night

gainter-tumed-director chnabel’s second (“Basquiat” was his shows at The Washington on 18 at 8 p.m.

Winner of the Grand Ju Prize at the 2000 Venice Pill Festival, Before Night Falte if a richly imagined journey mth the life and writings of the bril* liant Cuban author and Reinaldo Arenas. af

The film stars Spanisl •ctor Javier Bardem whose quent, complex performance Arenas earned him the fFenice Film Festival’s (pup for Best Actor. The Spans the whole of Arenas’life from his rural childhood m&i early embrace of (;t]bj§ Revolution to the persecution he would later experience »s |( Writer and homosexual* in Castro’s Cuba; from his depar* ture from Cuba in the Mariel Harboar exodus of 1980 to hil exile and death in the United States.

^It is a portrait of a jpahi

oee search for freedom-ajrtis| tic, political, and sexual-defied poverty, censorship, persecu* tion, exile and death. Bardei is extraordinary-delicate Unconquerable-in his English-language role, gp'' Johnny Depp hen roles: a transvestite named Bon Bon who smui Arenas’s manuscripts out and <. a sadistic Cuban p official. Sean Penn has a ci appearance as Cuco Sand fold-toothed peasant.

Bardem was nominal an Academy Award Actor in this film. It tetaiy accolades with American Film Institute naming it Movie of the Year in 2000.

Showing at 8 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 18, the film is rated R, _

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