Trópico De Câncer

As it's many years since I read the book I can't recall whether it had the same impression on me as the film, which was to profoundly depress me about the nature of man. The protagonist seems pretty much without redeeming features. He chases women in order to get them into bed, but seems to be basically hostile to them. He has friends in order to sponge off them. His sneering smile just makes me want to slap his face. I suspect however that this was not the intention of the film and we're really supposed to think he's quite a guy. In the context of the times the explicit language and sex scenes exploit a new permissiveness, but fundamentally it's an ugly and sexist depiction of men and women : the men trying to get sex with the minimum of commitment, and the women trying to pin the men down or get their money. It's really dated in this respect. On the plus side, I enjoyed the beautiful female bodies. The Parisian landscape shots also lift the ugliness from time to time.