Maybe I was expressing myself too much "in favor" of Benigno'd character. I must say that the first time I saw "Hable con ella" (as much as i already liked it) I was very disappointed with the ending, for most of the reasons madhuban mentioned. I thought the death of Benigno was an eays escape, the coming together of Marco (for me a totally unsypathetic guy, and the least interesting of them all) and Alicia in the end a pondering to middle class morale (the two most "normal" characters), etc. I would have liked to have seen everybody confronted with the facts of what has happened (mainly Alicia and Benigno meet face to face after all has happened, and see both react to it!).
But I failed to realize what the film was really about. The film is imo (after several viewings) essentially about Marco. Everything that is added is "merely" there to illuminate this person. He is given shape and insight through all the other people and his action with them. What takes in fact place is a transformation of Marco from beginning to end, parenthesized through the same situation in the theatre. Benigno is a kind of mirror of himself, showing him the opposites/possibilities of his own personality (that's also why the two get along, because imo they are very alike, but responding to their situations through differing acts of enclosure). Both are a-social characters who are not able to communicate to their environment properly, but Marco in the end is offered some hope (through everything that has happened). The ending imo is open, with bringing Alicia and Marco together not as a happy end, but as two people who have gone through a lot, but are not as much dislocated because of this, but have found a firmer place and sense of themselves. 
Also i didn't want to excuse Benigno's rape, just wanted to say that imo it doesn't fit into the classical theme, as a) it isn't actually enforced on the victim (who is not merely unconscious, but clinically dead) thus making it more an act of necrophilia. But for Benigno she is alive, thus bringing it again "closer" to rape. The gay aspect is also very interesting, as Benigno is clearly shown in the b&w silent sequence (which is btw. my favorite of the film) to want to not only merge with Alicia, but through his definite entering into her body BECOME her. At once this can be seen as the ultimate expression of love or the ultimate expression of a person who is maybe not gay, but to be more precise who would like to be a woman (when we see him watching her at the beginning - she the opposite of him as self-assured, fulfillling her desires and wishes- she is somebody who may have led a life that Benigno would have wanted (to me there were overtones of Hitchcock as in all of Almodvar I've seen). 
Also Benigno is in fact faced with some consequences, when the staff finds out his doings. Loss of respect as a person, imprisonment, etc. In fact only Marco is in some ways supportive of him (not his act), not because he feels indebted to him as a friend, but because he can understand his motivations and his love for Alicia (as i said, both are very alive). Also in the end through the death of Benigno, it could be said that he has in fact become a part of Alicia, (because she is in a way all that is left of him, making Marco's newfound (?) fascination with her also something of a "gay" thing (but maybe I'm overinterpreting here, as Marco hints at the fact that he wants to talk about everything with her!). 

Will check your link for Sorrentino later as it took all the time I have right now answering to your post .