Ok, what happened, to tell the truth I really don't care, because the whole movie was so confusing that by the end I was just gald it was over. Did Marcos fake his suicide? are we supposed to believe that Dean and Sofia and Marcos got together and planned revenge on Pablo? Did Dean have Pablo's head or whole body stuffed in that cooler and sent back to him?
Thanks
Pablo's head in the cooler. (Apparently.) It seems like Sofia and Marcos manipulated Dean into getting the guts to kill Pablo.
shareSofia and Marcos found the opportunity to take revenge on Pablo when Dean showed up in Buenos Aires. Dean was already driven half mad by then so it was not too hard to push him over the edge with a few clever tricks.
shareBut if Sofia and Marcos wanted revenge on Pablo using Dean, why was Marcos supposed to kill Dean? Wouldn't they want him alive? I agree, a very confusing ending.
shareWas that Sofia and Marcos on the steps at the end? did he really kill him? it did'nt look like it, but i still hated this movie,not a good gay theme in this one
shareOkay, this makes sense now. Sofia, the widow, and her family will now get the money from Pablo's family that they need to keep their house.
As for the gay theme thing - it's more of a human thing with a gay overtone.
why marcus killed himself? i missed that part of the movie..
what happened at the end of the movie? did dean killed pablo? how he killed him?
its bad as i happened to miss out the ending of this logo movie..
think it was a great movie though...
Well, I had TiVo'd the movie off Logo last week and finally got around to watching it today. Unfortunately, the TiVo stopped recording just as he got into the car w/the cooler, so I have no idea what the final scenes may have been. So, Marcos didn't commit suicide? I'm really confused.
HELP!
"Is that all there is?" - Peggy Lee
I just Tivo'd it off Logo too! But anyway - after you see him drive away with the cooler, it cuts to one final scene where Sofia is sitting on the steps of one of the country houses (hers or Pablo's IDK) and then some guy walks out to sit with her and she lights his cigarette, and I am almost positive that it's Marcos, but the shot is kind of far off, so it's possible it's someone else. That's it, that's the end. I think these explanations have been pretty good, but I'm still confused about what really happened to Pablo.
shareIt got cut off on my Tivo also, was very pissed. I've read up on the book's author. Sounds like the book is better. Going to have to read some of his stuff.
shareI watched this on Logo this past week as well, and I very much enjoyed it (I do want to watch the unedited DVD soon).
However, at the end of the movie (when Pablo's head arrives in the cooler), I couldn't help thinking how appropriate it would be if Dean broke out into song, and sang the Norma Desmond tune from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Susnet Boulevard"...
"When he scorned me I
Knew he'd have to die...
Let me kiss his severed head.
Compromise or death?
He fought to his last breath!
He never knew the meaning of surrender...
Just like me he never could surrender."
After reading some of the preceding comments and questions, I can make some sense of the ending.
For me, that was definitely Marcos who sat down on the steps next to his sister Sofia in the final scene. Apparently they had used Dean to off Pablo while keeping their hands clean. A major flaw is how they could have counted on Dean not to look more closely at the "body" of Marcos after his faked suicide.
I think the contents of the cooler are meant to remain tantalizingly inconclusive.... but there is a strong hint that it's some kind of "meat" when the doggie tries to open it.
The ending doesn't matter because the movie is crap. This is the problem when two idiots pay $10,000 for the rights to a superior novel. By the time that David Moreton and Dennis Hensley "adapted" James Robert Baker's novel to the screen, there was nothing left of the original. Based on Dennis Hensley's fawning over Argentinian men (as seen on the "Making Of" DVD extra) it is obvious that these girls only wanted to go to Argentina and used this movie as their vehicle.
The novel TESTOSTERONE is a totally different matter. Anyone who has read the book and seen the film knows that the film version only used the book's initial premise (Pablo goes out for cigarettes and never returns) and conclusion (Dean Seagrave decapitates Pablo and places the head in a cooler). What happens inbetween is a totally different story. The novel is a nightmarish descent into madness set in the cities of Venice, California, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, San Diego and, finally, Tijuana. There are echoes of the bloody Matamoros cult, animal torture and the sleazier aspects of California gay cruising life. The film version is a dressed up pretentious queeny affair -- and, yes, sensibility has a lot to do with both versions; the filmmakers apparently embrace the queeny swish lifestyle whereas author James Robert Baker takes a rougher, surreal approach suffused with plenty of sick humor -- set in Buenos Aires. Even Pablo's mother, who is spotted in one brief scene in the novel -- a parking lot argument -- is elevated to one of the biggest parts of this doomed movie. And the approach towards Dean's obsession -- Pablo -- is flawed. In the novel he is similar to a scruffy Andy Garcia of over twenty years ago; in the movie version he is the queeny Antonio Sabato Jr., Calvin Klein underwear model, trying to look pretty for the abs and underwear crowd. The extremely unnecessary convoluted story line is entirely the work of director David Moreton and screenwriter Dennis Hensley. So 90% of this movie was hastily made up to justify a trip to Argentina. It is entirely unclear as to why they wanted to film this novel if they were going to completely rewrite it. They could have saved themselves $10,000 and written an original story to film. And, as those of us who are friends of James Robert Baker know too well, any of us could have made a much more compelling motion picture with our cheap video cameras and iMovie and a cast of unknowns.
On a kinder note I will praise David Sutcliffe in the film's major role, and Celina Font comes off strong as "Sofia," a character not from the novel. It would be a shame if this inferior film harmed her career. She deserves much better.
I sympathize w/ the people hating this film for butchering a fine novel; I haven't read it, nor heard of it until it has been mentioned in these entries, however, I do know what it feels like to have one of your favorite books murdered on screen. However, I do feel that all of the heat being directed at the movie is exagerated. For someone that didn't know a thing about the book, I found this movie extremely enjoyable. I've watched it 3x already and it hasn't bored me yet! I enjoy the humour, the story, the fact that the main character isn't as stereotypical/cliche as MOST of ALL the gay cinema movie characters i've seen, the madness, quite frankly, I LOVE this movie! Yes, there are better movies, and yes, it could have been better, but I am very happy that this movie turned out the way it did: Good. I was on the brink of losing all faith in 'gay cinema', what with the very few titles that ARE good being needles in a very very big haystack (Adv. of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Bad Education, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Taboo, High Art, Soldier's Girl), and then I came upon this. I am very happy w/ this movie, I enjoy it very much, my opinion might change if I ever decide to pick up the book, but even then, if you could just try to forget that it's a book altogether or look at it as just being a movie, you could still cut it a LOT of slack. This author is pleased to say, yet again, that this is a VERY good movie.
shareI too did not read the book. Thus, I found the movie VERY entertaining as well. I watched it 2x's and I loved it both times. You have to sink yourself into the world of fantasy a bit to wrap your head around it, but hey, in a world where Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Star Wars are box office hits, one wonders what makes it so hard for people to so the same for this flick. Likely because it is presented as real and the surreal nature of the movie comes off as 'all wrong'. From the sounds of the book, it would be a gruesome read; the movie is not gruesome, it is hilarious, if you have and/or can appreciate dark humor. As to the storyline, my take: Pablo leaves to go back to Argentina to marry Sofia because he wants her family name and she needs his money so she is also agreeable. Marcos was in love with Pablo prior to this, but Pablo flaked on him, just as he flaked on Dean his American Lover - the man is heartless. Well he returns and Sofia and Marcos plan to take his money and knock him off. Reasons: The sister loves the brother and as they both chased Pablo when they were young and the sister 'let Marcos have him' only to watch Pablo disgard him, she rather dislikes, possibly hates, Pablo for this. Marcos the dumped lover is also not a fan of Pablo anymore. However, Marcos for reasons given below agrees to kill the lover (Dean) from America at the request of Pablo. It was not entirely clear to me why Pablo would kill Dean rather than just talk to him and send him home; but one must accept that it is possible that the spoiled, rich Pablo just does things that way. (Not that far of a stretch, we recall in real life the two sons who decided to kill their parents because the father molested them (understandable perhaps) and because the mother did nothing about it (a little out there) so yes, people do the inexplicable in real life as well). Well Marcos has a couple of motives to originally want to kill Dean. A. he stole his lover; b. he may screw up the wedding plans with his sister which they are both counting on. However, Marcos is too taken with Dean to kill him, so instead the sister and brother contrive to fake Marcos death and infuse Dean with a motive to kill Pablo. However they have to plan carefully and keep him from Pablo until AFTER the wedding so they can ensure that they get the cash. Thus all of the leading him away from wherever Pablo REALLY is located. Here we enter the world of star wars - fantasy land - because Dean doesn't really ever seem to get a good enough motive to kill Pablo. Nonetheless Dean kills Pablo and places his head in the cooler because "the only way to silence a snake is to cut its head off".
Now that last bit took the movie out of the realm of reality for me; however, that is WHY I loved the movie. It was so impossible that it made Pablo's death not a heart wrenching tale of morbid and gruesome horror, but...funny. The sister and brother end up with the money and no one cares what happens to the mom so they don't tell us. Meanwhile a few hot boy-boy scenes splashed in for color, a few twists and turns and a lot of terrific dark humor throughout make for a highly entertaining tale. It ranks among my top 5 boy-boy themed movies.
What a strange film. I want to like it because I loved the location shots and I like the actors. But, the plot is puzzling. I read the book and found it very troubling. But the book and the film are two different stories. The book is a downer; the film is neutral at best. All that is left after viewing it is, huh?
shareThanks for the explanation. I recently watched the movie on Logo and though I was uniformly entertained, I was more than a little confused about what was going on. I guess now that I know what's going on, I'll have to watch it again.
shareIt is interesting that people state they watched the film on "Logo" channel because having just viewed the DVD, I wonder how anyone enjoyed it with all the bleeps inserted--CBS censors, ya know ?
I would add that probably the novel would find a reading and playing on "Here" while this film adaptation would fit within "Logo" scheduling.
This film softened a harsh novel. And, without turning into a channel debate, I would contrast the film's softer tone to films like "Frisk" or "Sugar" (which might not play on "L").
i came here to ask the same question, i realized marcos faked his death. I felt sorry for him initially and thought Marcus was too stupid to kill himself over Pablo since he himself was pretty hot LOL but in the end I found out that he was all fine
shareInteresting analysis of a very confusing movie. The one part that still puzzles me is how did Sofia and her brother even knew that Dean was going to come to Argentina searching for Pablo? So they couldn't have planned on including Dean in their devious plan.
shareI have to agree. This movie confused me. What was the point of Marcos pretending to commit suicide? And in the beginning why was the mother at Dean's art show if she didn't want to speak to him? And if Marcos was supposed to kill Dean, why didn't they go through with the plan? Was it Pablo's idea for Marcos to kill Dean or was it Sophia's? I don't know. I'm lost. I know Dean cut off Pablo's head at the end of the movie because the dvd included a deleted scene with Dean riding around with his head in the cooler. The movie was interesting, but the main reason I watched it 4 times was because Pablo, Marcos and the bellboy were hot.
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I was rather startled by the twists in this movie - what at first looked like a gay rom-com suddenly turned pretty dark. I was confused long before the ending. The characters do so many odd things and make such bizarre choices that it made my head spin. I was hoping the plot would untangle itself before the end but as we know, that was not to be. Perhaps the ending is meant to be oblique and keep us guessing. (E.g. Was Marcos actually a ghost in the end - did he become the ghost in his room that he was afraid of?)
But as has been mentioned the acting was good and Dean, Marcus and the bellboy were blistering hot (Sabato Jnr you can keep). I'm not sure I enjoyed the movie but I found it gripping and intriguing.