The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz is one of my favorite films we’ve seen so far. Its tone and many of its ideas and themes remind me of Hitchcock’s work, especially Rope or Psycho. In My Last Breath, Buñuel says paranoics, like poets, are born, not made. Archibaldo, Pedro from The Brute, and Francisco from El are all in tune with this line.

In the reading, Ernesto Acevedo describes machismo as an “irrational instinct.” In many ways, the ideas tied to machismo and masculinity are almost as damaging to men as they are to women. Archibaldo becomes an impotent figure throughout the film, never reaching his desires or pleasures. The first time we see him, he’s dressed in his mother’s clothes, and he’s hiding. To me, this moment captures his inability to live up to a masculine ideal, taken to the extreme through murder.

I don’t fully agree that we have to see Archibaldo’s character as homosexual. The trope of the gay man as evil or a killer is tired and, frankly, homophobic. You don’t have to be a repressed homosexual to be a misogynist. Sure, he’s effeminate, and if we decide to read him as a stand-in for the nation, he’s even emasculated by the effects the Revolution had on the country. But by reading his character only through a queer lens, we ignore a broader reality: that most men are socialized to feel entitled to women’s bodies. Ultimately, Buñuel’s film exposes not a “deviant” sexuality, but the violence inherent in the straight, masculine ideal itself.