The Feast of the Goat by Luis Llosa
Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the towering figures of Spanish-language literature, passed away yesterday at the age of 89. As the world reflects on his monumental literary legacy, it’s also worth remembering his often fraught, deeply personal relationship with cinema. For a writer whose imagination was shaped by the flickering images of matinee screenings in Lima, Vargas Llosa remained a lifelong cinephile—even as he questioned the medium’s ability to capture the complexity of literature.
The connection between Vargas Llosa’s work and cinema began in earnest in 1973, when Mexican director Jorge Fons adapted The Cubs / Los cachorros into a feature film. Based on Vargas Llosa’s 1967 novella, the film stars José Alonso, Helena Rojo, and Carmen Montejo and follows Cuéllar, a young boy whose life is tragically altered by a violent accident at school. As his friends mature, form relationships, and start families, Cuéllar struggles with isolation and a growing sense of difference. A brief romance with a model named Tere ends in rejection, pushing him toward a tragic conclusion. The film was a box office success in Mexico, running for 20 weeks in theaters.
In 1976, Vargas Llosa wrote the screenplay for the documentary La odisea de los Andes, directed by Chilean-born Álvaro Covacevich. The film tells the harrowing true story of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes Mountains in October 1972, and the survivors' 72-day struggle for survival.
That same year, Vargas Llosa adapted and co-directed with José María Gutiérrez Santos the film Pantaleón, based on his 1973 novel Captain Pantoja and the Special Service. The story follows Captain Pantaleón Pantoja, a disciplined and effective officer in the Peruvian army, who is tasked with establishing a special service to provide sexual services to soldiers stationed at isolated jungle outposts. The film stars José Sacristán, Pancho Córdova, Katy Jurado, and Rosa Carmina.
In 1985, Peruvian director Francisco J. Lombardi brought Vargas Llosa’s seminal debut novel La ciudad y los perros (The City and the Dogs) to the screen. First published in 1963 and known in English as The Time of the Hero, the novel is a searing critique of authoritarianism, set in the brutal confines of a military academy modeled after the Leoncio Prado Military School in Lima. Lombardi’s adaptation captures the oppressive environment and psychological complexity of the narrative, focusing on a student clique known as “The Circle,” which traffics in contraband—cigarettes, alcohol, pornography—and stolen exam answers, destabilizing the academy’s rigid hierarchy.
Two years later, in 1987, Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Alarcón reimagined The Time of the Hero for a Soviet audience in the film Yaguar. This adaptation, starring Sergey Veksler, Artyom Kaminsky, Adel Al-Khadad, and Sergey Gazarov, transposes the novel’s critique of militarism to the context of Pinochet-era Chile, offering a politically charged interpretation of Vargas Llosa’s themes through a Cold War lens.
In 1990, Vargas Llosa’s more comedic and metafictional side found expression in Tune in Tomorrow…, a Hollywood adaptation of his 1977 novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. Directed by Jon Amiel and starring Keanu Reeves, Barbara Hershey, and Peter Falk, the film relocates the action from 1950s Lima to New Orleans in 1951. It follows a young law student who works at a local radio station and falls in love with his free-spirited Aunt Julia. Chaos ensues when Pedro, a flamboyant new scriptwriter at the station, begins incorporating their romance into his melodramatic radio serials, blurring the line between life and fiction.
In 1999, Lombardi returned to Vargas Llosa’s oeuvre with a second adaptation of Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (Pantaleón y las visitadoras), this time with Salvador del Solar, Angie Cepeda, and Mónica Sánchez in leading roles. The film achieved considerable international success, praised for its satirical tone, strong performances, and its faithful yet cinematic rendering of Vargas Llosa’s biting critique of institutional hypocrisy within the military.
Vargas Llosa’s 2000 novel The Feast of the Goat was adapted for the big screen in 2005 by Luis Llosa, the author’s cousin. Set in the Dominican Republic, the international co-production stars Tomás Milián, Isabella Rossellini, Paul Freeman, Juan Diego Botto, and Eileen Atkins. The film follows Urania Cabral, who returns to Santo Domingo after many years and is forced to confront her family’s entanglement with dictator Rafael Trujillo and the events leading up to his assassination.
In 2023, Vargas Llosa’s 2010 novel Bad Girl / Travesuras de la Niña Mala was adapted to a television series produced by ViX, the streaming service of TelevisaUnivision, directed by Pavel Vazquez and Alejandro Bazzano. The series is the story of a nonconformist and adventurous woman, and her once teenage love, Ricardo, a man trapped in a predictable routine.
Most recently, in 2024, Luis Llosa directed Tattoos in Memory / Tatuajes en la memoria, from a screenplay written by Mario Vargas Llosa. Based on Memorias de un soldado desconocido, the autobiographical book by Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez, the film tells the story of a former child soldier and guerrilla fighter who seeks redemption by becoming a Franciscan priest.
In addition to the screen adaptations of his work, Vargas Llosa also served as president of the jury at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.
