This 2000 version of Mario Vargas Llosas' excellent novel was an improvement over the 1975 adaptation, co-directed by the Peruvian author, which seems to have vanished from Earth. But in neither case the films do justice to Vargas Llosa's work.
Just average, zero-degree style of moviemaking, that pale in comparison to the writer's prose and original narrative techniques, which make the novel so good, beyond its plot about a young captain of the Peruvian army who creates a traveling service of international prostitutes to appease the sexual desire of the troops stationed in the Amazon jungle of Peru, who have begun to attack the virtuous young native women.
Vargas Llosa uses all kinds of resources (as Bram Stoker did before in his novel "Dracula"), such as reports, dispatches or memoranda, while managing to advance the action, dynamizing the use of verbs, through the annotations made to every line of dialogue. As they say, "Comparisons are odious", but if the novel was a real milestone in the history of Latin American literature, neither of the two films is significant for Peruvian, Latin American or world cinema.
Just average, zero-degree style of moviemaking, that pale in comparison to the writer's prose and original narrative techniques, which make the novel so good, beyond its plot about a young captain of the Peruvian army who creates a traveling service of international prostitutes to appease the sexual desire of the troops stationed in the Amazon jungle of Peru, who have begun to attack the virtuous young native women.
Vargas Llosa uses all kinds of resources (as Bram Stoker did before in his novel "Dracula"), such as reports, dispatches or memoranda, while managing to advance the action, dynamizing the use of verbs, through the annotations made to every line of dialogue. As they say, "Comparisons are odious", but if the novel was a real milestone in the history of Latin American literature, neither of the two films is significant for Peruvian, Latin American or world cinema.
