El hombre nuevo (2015) User Reviews

Uncovering the pieces of the puzzle of a quite interesting character's life

[guisreis · 8/10 · 5 October 2015]

A co-production from Uruguay, Nicaragua and Chile is, itself, something surprising and interesting, that worth watching. Though, besides that, Stephania - or Roberto - is also an amazing character, what makes this documentary very interesting. Stephania is a travestite who, although having prostituted herself as most travestites, now works as a car guard. While living the present, she is obviously awkward about ageing (and being bald) as she is extremely vain. Indeed, while she celebrates the changing times, with the official acceptance of her gender as female and the plan to make a gender re-assignment surgery, she is also always concerned about her past. While prejudice and violence always came for her, it is her childhood as Roberto the age that needs to be solved in her mind. Roberto was born in Nicaragua, fought as a Sandinista guerrillero and teacher when was still a child, always had traits that made him different from the brothers (long hair, liked to wear women clothes, danced very well, helped much more in domestic affairs, etc) and was let to be adopted by an Uruguayan couple in an event that has not been well explained. As a matter of fact, the film is not a linear story, but a puzzle that has its pieces uncovered as we watch it. Some pieces are not shown, such as the details of Stephania's problems in Montevideo, who were the Uruguayans who adopted the Roberto (the testimonies say that they were conservatives about her gender condition, leftist Tupamaro activists, and that they did not say goodbye when they left Nicaragua... it seems that the pieces do not fit each other very well and that more information would be useful) and went to Uruguay because her parents gave him/her for adoption to the foreign couple. Present meets the past when, after more than three decades, she contacts her Nicaraguan family and goes back to her native country in order to visit them. While she remembers the houses as if she had never left, sometimes she also faces Nicaraguan culture as if she were a foreigner. There are different reactions in her family, and while most of her relatives accept more or less easily her new condition, a younger brother wants the Pentecostal church to bring Roberto back "as a God made him". The film ends abruptly, but nothing more was really necessary. The movie brings important elements for discussing gender and Nicaraguan politics.