only echoes of each genre, for the film does not fulfill the expectations raised in the viewer by these different genres. The film alludes to a variety of film musicals and has a film-within-a-film structure, with the internal film referencing the genre of the film musical. However, it does so in a way that undercuts any memories the viewer might have of musical comedy, for these sequences are exotic and dramatic rather than humorous. A semiotic analysis of the internal film reminds the analyst of Hollywood productions with Maria Montez or some other exotic star, with the setting being not the real Latin America but an echo of the way Hollywood presents Latin America and Latin American music. It is also evident that this film connects to texts from the theater, for as a film, this one tends toward theatrical conversation and gesture as much as filmic image.
Most of Puig's novel is presented as a dialogue between the two men, and they reveal themselves in their own words. The true nature of their being cell mates is revealed in the middle of the novel. Until that point, the reader sees the two men as precisely what they say they are--two men imprisoned for quite different crimes and merely happening to be in the same cell and trying to make the best of it. In Chapter 8, the reader learns that this is not true and that Molina was deliberately planted in the cell to gather information. Molina is indeed a priso
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