‘Motorcycle Diaries’ is
a vivid travelogue

Walter Salles, the Brazilian-born director of “Central Station,” has created another vivid, travelogue-ish road movie about a couple of penniless South Americans who develop a bond as they practice their survival skills.

“The Motorcycle Diaries,” however, is based on fact: the journals of two young Argentines, Alberto Granado and Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. The latter became better-known as “Che” Guevara, who rose to fame during Castro’s Cuban revolution, exported guerrilla warfare to Bolivia, and was killed there in 1967.

Quick facts Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Rodrigo de la Serna, Mia Maestro, Mercedes Moran, Susana Lanteri Director: Walter Salles Run time: 2 hours, 8 minutes MPAA rating: R In Spanish with English subtitles

But the diaries were written in 1952, when Guevara and his best friend Granado were in their 20s, and the film (aside from a final-curtain cameo appearance by the real Granado) restricts itself to that period. The script by Jose Rivera (“Eerie, Indiana”) presents them as romantic idealists who gradually become aware of the injustices suffered by the people they visit in Argentina, Peru and Chile.

Their journey begins in slapstick fashion, as Guevara and Granado, mounted on an overburdened 1939 motorcycle, nearly get hit by a Buenos Aires bus after saying their farewells to friends and family. Granado is a biochemist, Guevara a medical student, and their plan is to travel through several countries, improvising as they go. They’re usually accepted by the miners, riverboat gamblers and prostitutes they meet along the way.

Indeed, the generosity of most of these strangers is remarkable. Especially impressive is an elderly doctor takes them in, feeds and clothes them and introduces them to his book collection, which includes his cherished, unpublished novel. When he finally asks the boys what they think of his creation, they’re faced with a truly squirm-inducing moral dilemma.

Their visit to a leper colony, where they defy a bureaucratic Mother Superior by shaking hands with the lepers and failing to go to mass, is the movie’s strongest, most substantial single episode. It gives all the actors a chance to be more than figures in a gorgeous landscape. (Eric Gautier is responsible for the evocative cinematography.)

“The Motorcycle Diaries” suffers occasionally from a once-over-lightly quality, perhaps because it’s restricted to Guevara’s youth and doesn’t deal with his darker side. But it’s infinitely superior to such pathetic dramatizations as Hollywood’s 1969 biography, “Che,” which starred a wildly miscast Omar Sharif as Guevara and Jack Palance as a scenery-chewing Castro.

The casting this time couldn’t be better. As Granado, the wilder of the two boys, Rodrigo de la Serna convincingly projects recklessness as well as astonishment when his companion takes unexpected chances. Although the early scenes make you wonder how these two very different people could become and stay friends, it gradually becomes obvious that each needs the other’s provocations.

Gael Garcia Bernal, who became a Mexican star with “Amores Perros” and will soon be seen in Pedro Almodovar’s “Bad Education,” does an exceptional job of suggesting Guevara’s gradual transformation. His performance more than justifies one of Guevara’s final lines: “I am not me anymore, at least not the me I was.”

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