Mexico City film director/provocateur Carlos Reygadas entered this film into the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. It is a serious art film, with sexuality so real it borders on the surreal. Romney (The Independent) says "if only because the film is so outré that it seems closer to modern art than to any usual form of narrative cinema. It's almost too damn weird to be a film."Marcos (a lead actor of exceptional unsightliness) is a security guard and a working class chauffeur working for a retired General, but has a few issues, not just that he is having sex with the General's daughter Ana. Btw, Ana gets her kicks working in the sex trade. You see, he and his very obese wife, Berta, have just learned that a neighbor's baby they kidnapped, accidentally died. That this mere fact is passed over so easily may be the most shocking aspect of the film. It's just a matter of time before Marcos comes clean with plans to turn himself in to the police, he already admitted his problem to Ana. Well, it makes sense then that he must kill her, and effectively dies himself while participating in a pilgrimage to the Basilica in honor of the Lady of Guadalupe. That's the story, fair enough.
But what makes this film interesting is the urban backdrop of Mexico City and the clinical treatment of rather mundane quotidinal carnal appetites among the characters. Does Reygadas have contempt for his actors ? It is hard to imagine they were chosen for anything besides their physical appearance. There is a very tender sex scene between Marcos and Berta, but due to their hippopotamus-like dimensions, it is more than totally bizarre. In a later sex scene between Marcos and Ana, the camera slowly pans through 360 degrees, implying all the city's problems come haunting the characters in that stark room. The improbable mismatch of body types strains the imagination (pardon the photo, I could not resist).
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