Boquitas pintadas
Boquitas Pintadas ( Spanish for " made up mouth ") is Manuel Puig's second novel, published in 1969 . Just as he originally created his first novel, La traición de Rita Hayworth , as a screenplay, he also planned to publish Boquitas Pintadas originally as Folletín - as a serialized novel .
Plot and style
As in La traición de Rita Hayworth , the action takes place in the Argentine provincial nest Coronel Vallegos, whose name is not by chance reminiscent of General Villegas of Puig's own birthplace. The action revolves around the suburban Don-Juan, Juan Carlos, the tubercular son from a family in which the father has long been dead. The novel begins with the death of Juan Carlos himself in 1947. This prolapse (anticipation) immediately creates a climate of hopelessness that is not resolved by jumping back into the years 1933 to 1947. The ex-lovers of Juan Carlos have their say, especially Nélida (or Nené), who in her letters from 1947 to Juan Carlos' mother hyped her love affair with the same as the love of her life, and in her current life in the capital Buenos Aires with hers Husband and two children only sees displeasure and disappointed hopes. The letters are intercepted (as the reader learns at the end of the novel) by Juan Carlos' disapproving sister Celina and answered. She never liked Nélida, and so she sends Nélida's letters, in which she swears her everlasting love for Juan Carlos, to her husband, who then leaves her - but the two find themselves together again. The novel ends with the early death of Nélida in 1968 and her request of her husband to burn her letters and those of Juan Carlos to her. Woven in this correspondence are episodes from the youth of Nélida, Juan Carlos, Mabel (another lover of Juan Carlos), Pancho (Juan Carlos' friend and rival in women's stories), Raba (has a child from Pancho) and others from her youth in Coronel Vallejos. Raba kills Pancho because he does not want to recognize his child and is also having an affair with Mabel. Nené is actually Juan Carlos's girlfriend, but he cheats on her with Mabel at an earlier point in time. After all, shortly before his death from tuberculosis, he allowed himself to be endured by an old widow with whom he also had a relationship.
In their pursuit of happiness and social advancement, the characters obey the stereotypes given to them by the kitschy radio plays and melodramatic films. Nené and Mabel in particular are more and more influenced by Folletín and Hollywood melodrama characters towards the end . The characters are linked through gossip, gossip and lies, but there is no real communication. In his novel, Puig describes the sterility of provincial life in Argentina , death, illness and decay.
At the beginning of each chapter there is a line of text from a tango (especially by Le Pera , who wrote most of the Tango Gardels ). This line of text, like a choir in a classical Greek play, anticipates the content of the following chapter. The reference to the tango gives the novel an additional melancholy connotation. The novel expresses sadness and hopelessness, the feelings of tango of the first generation of immigrants in Argentina.
criticism
Critics often said the characters were one-dimensional and devoid of any tragic dimension, even if the novel sold well. For example, Nené is very multidimensional, all of Puig's characters are very real in their simplicity, and very similar to many readers. In his novels, Puig combines mass culture (or everyday culture ) with high culture or avant-garde . He uses both conventional and avant-garde means.
The fact that the German title “The most beautiful tango in the world” refers to a quote from the Foxtrot “Rubias de New York” Gardels may be considered an irony of fate compared to an author who never felt the world understood.
filming
The novel was made into a film in 1974 by the Argentinian director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson .