The most complex and complete expression of the anti-machismo that gives such a forceful critical edge to so many of Ripstein's masterworks, The Place Without Limits marked an important milestone in Mexican cinema through its unprecedentedly frank depiction of homosexuality and violently reactionary homophobia. Ripstein's devastating portrait of masculinity in irredeemable crisis is transgressive in powerfully literal ways, embodied in the willfully contradictory characters who shatter traditional gender boundaries and roles. Loosely centered around a transvestite prostitute and his/her daughter, The Place Without Limits carefully destabilizes gender roles to reveal an unsettling instability at the heart of patriarchy itself as embodied in the avaricious and embittered patriarch ruthlessly abusing his position as cacique to slowly strangle life out of the tumbleweed Norteño town which is the film's stark setting. Ripstein himself adapted the eponymous 1975 novel by José Donosco that was originally intended for Manuel Puig, whose first screenplay attempts proved unsatisfactory