Landes's tone is never salacious or exploitative, nor for that matter pandering or sentimental. This is a sui generis work—warm, sporadically funny, deeply human, and altogether beguiling.
Vividly depicting the indignities of the flesh, Porfirio offers a harshly sensual portrait of a man imprisoned by paralysis and the callousness of the state.
The whole notion of taking a page out of the Bressonian handbook (nonprofessional performers, a complete lack of emotionalism) lends a spiritual aspect to this antihero’s plight, with neither social neglect nor a battered corpus keeping his soul from transcending the self. Reaping the benefits of such a minimalist methodology, however, requires a high tolerance for Porfirio’s pitiless formalism.