Director Julian Schnabel's follow-up to Basquiat is another compelling portrait of a troubled artist. This time the focus is on gay Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, brought to brave, startling and moving life by Spanish superstar Javier Bardem, who won a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his searing portrayal. Arenas was born in rural Cuba in 1943 and died in New York in 1990 after contracting Aids, and Schnabel's polished, visually distinctive and confident biography covers the key episodes in the poet's traumatic life. His poverty-stricken childhood, his taboo homosexual lifestyle in 1950s Havana, and his revolutionary awakening in the 1960s made Arenas an intellectual outcast, anathema to Fidel Castro's regime. Schnabel's fascinating study of the poet's life and work expertly paints an emotionally rewarding picture, brilliantly shot and edited. Schnabel finds provocative beauty even in the starker moments, as Bardem inhabits the mind-set of his colourful character with a keen and rare insight. An intelligent, lucid and affecting masterpiece that succinctly captures the spirit of Arenas himself.

Spanning several decades, this powerful biopic offers a glimpse into the life of famed Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas, an artist who was vilified for his homosexuality in Fidel Castro's Cuba.