The Making Of: Arturo Ripstein on El lugar sin límites (Part II of II)

"Pasó a la historia como la primera película que mostró sin tapujos un beso entre dos hombres"

Ripstein on Gonzalo Vega

¿Quién es Roberto Cobo? Roberto Cobo was a Mexican actor best known for his iconic role as Jaibo in Los olvidados (Luis Buñuel). In El lugar sin límites, he delivers a late-career performance as La Manuela that redefined his legacy, marking one of the most complex and consequential portrayals of gender variance in Mexican cinema. To colab with him was very difficult, according to Ripstein.

In this portion of the interview, Arturo Ripstein recalls the reception of El lugar sin límites at the San Sebastián International Film Festival (Edition 26), where the film—and particularly the kiss between La Manuela and Pancho—provoked intense backlash from both attendants and critics. Ripstein notes that the controversy extended beyond the screen: the director, actors, and crew were subjected to public scrutiny and hostility, revealing how the film’s challenge to sexual and gender norms exceeded cinematic boundaries and entered the realm of social offense.

This reaction must be situated within the context of late Francoist Spain, where censorship, moral conservatism, and authoritarian regulation of sexuality remained deeply entrenched, even as the regime approached its end. In this climate, the onscreen kiss was not read as narrative gesture or melodramatic device, but as a provocation—an intolerable visualization of queer desire that violated the tacit separation between what could be known and what could be publicly shown. The scandal underscores how El lugar sin límites made visible not only transfeminine desire, but also the fragility of heteromasculine coherence when confronted with recognition.

Ironically, the controversy about the kiss between two men contributed to the film’s growing notoriety and popularity. What was condemned in one context circulated as fascination in another, allowing El lugar sin límites to travel widely and secure a lasting place in film history. Ripstein’s reflections thus reveal how scandal operated as both constraint and catalyst: the same act that triggered moral outrage in Francoist Spain helped cement the film’s status as a landmark in Mexican—and transnational—cinema. The kiss becomes, retrospectively, a hinge between censorship and circulation, punishment and visibility, marking the high cost and unexpected reach of transfeminine representation in Mexican cultural production. The director suggests that he might be the first in working the topic of transness (travestismo, homosexualidad) the way he did.