Metacritic reviews

To Die Like a Man deserves your attention for showcasing a filmmaker with the capacity for bold narrative trickery that doesn't come at the expense of emotional investment.

A mysterious, fabulously sad fable.

The film suddenly gains in power, until it fulfills the promise of its title with hard-hitting compassion and a crystal-clear sense of grace.

To Die Like A Man is powerfully controlled, and builds to a moving finale in which the characters are stripped down to their essences: no flowers, just stem.

The title leaves no doubt about the ending but, thanks to Santos's unflinching performance and Rodrigues's continued audaciousness, the climax still takes us aback.

For all its melodrama To Die Like a Man is a not a tearjerker. Its gaze into the void is as unblinking as that of the H.I.V.-positive 60-year-old hustler in Jacques Nolot's even more hard-headed film, "Before I Forget."

Strictly for patient, gay-friendly audiences, this drawn-out melodrama about an ageing drag star in overstays its welcome.

The praise for this static, overlong, stagebound work is a mystery to me.