Heartbreak tango

Boquitas Pintadas (Spanish about "make little mouth ") is the second novel published in 1969 Manuel Puig. Just as he originally docked his first novel, La traición de Rita Hayworth as a screenwriter, he also planned Boquitas Pintadas originally as Folletín - as a serial novel - bring out.

Plot and style

The action takes place, as well as in La traición de Rita Hayworth, in the Argentine province of Coronel nest Vallegos, whose name is no accident to the suite of Puig's birthplace General Villegas recalls. The plot revolves around the suburban Don Juan, Juan Carlos, the tubercular son from a family in which the father is long dead. The novel begins with the death of Juan Carlos himself in 1947. Through this prolepsis ( anticipation ) is equal to a climate of hopelessness produced that is not resolved by the jump back to the years from 1933 to 1947. We hear from the Exliebhaberinnen of Juan Carlos, especially Nélida (or Nené ), the parent hyped up in her letters from 1947 to Juan Carlos ' their former love affair with the same as the love of her life, and in her current life in the capital Buenos Aires, with its husband and two children sees only frustration and dashed hopes. The letters are but (as the reader learns at the end of the novel ) by Juan Carlos ' miss cheaper sister Celina intercepted and answered. You could Nélida never liked, so she sends the letters Nélidas in which they summon their everlasting love for Juan Carlos, to her husband, who then leaves, - but the two find back together. The novel ends with the untimely death of Nélida in 1968, and her plea to her husband to burn her and the letters of Juan Carlos to them. Cocooned in this correspondence are episodes from the youth of Nélida, Juan Carlos, Mabel ( another lover of Juan Carlos ), Pancho ( Juan Carlos's friend and rival in women's stories ), Raba ( has a child of Pancho ) and the other from their youth in Vallejos. Raba brings Pancho around as he refuses to acknowledge his child, and also has an affair with Mabel. Nené is actually the friend of Juan Carlos, but he deceives them at an earlier time with Mabel. He settled shortly before his death from tuberculosis kept by an old widow, with whom he also has a ratio.

The figures follow in their pursuit of happiness and social advancement of the stereotypes that are given to them by the cheesy melodramatic plays and films. Just Nené and Mabel are influenced more and more by Folletín and of the Hollywoodmelodramgestalten towards the end. The characters are linked by gossip, gossip and lies, but there is no real communication takes place. Puig describes in his novel the sterility of provincial life in Argentina, death, disease and decay.

At the beginning of each chapter is a line of text of a tango (especially Le Pera, who wrote most of Gardel's tango ). This line of text to anticipate like a chorus in a classical Greek play the content of the following chapter. The reference to the tango, the novel gets an additional melancholic connotation. The novel expresses sadness and hopelessness, feelings of tango of the first generation of immigrants in Argentina.

Criticism

Critics often said they were one-dimensional characters and no tragic dimension, even though the novel sold well. For example Nené is very multi-dimensional, all figures Puig's are very real in their simplicity, and very similar to many readers. Puig combines in his novels the mass culture (or popular culture ) with the high culture and the avant-garde. He makes use of both conventional and avant-garde means.

The fact that the German title of " The most beautiful tango in the world" is calculated on a quote from the Foxtrot " Rubias de New York " Gardel's concerns, like the irony of fate are applicable for a writer who never felt understood by the world so well.

Filming

The novel was made ​​into a film in 1974 by the Argentine director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson.

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• Text " Boquitas Pintadas "

• Literary work
• Literature ( 20th century)
• Literature ( Spanish)
• Argentine literature
• Novel, epic