Viewed away from its snap dismissals at Cannes, the fourth film from Mexican experimenter Carlos Reygadas ( Silent Light ) resembles Uncle Boonmee seen through Tarkovsky’s Mirror ; tough to grasp but giddy with ideas and indelible images.
Pivoting on the traumas of a well-off rural family, the story is a simple one made abstract by Reygadas’ cut-up chronology, blurred edges and poetic juxtapositions (innocence/experience, reality/fantasy, past/future).
Some metaphors score and some miss, but this is leap-of-faith cinema: the rewards entail some risks.
