Mexican director Carlos Reygadas’ latest film comes with impressive art-house bona fides. It was booed last year at Cannes (a rite of passage for auteurs), then he won the festival’s best director prize.
The first scene sets the mood for this fine, if imperfect, movie. A little girl (Reygadas’ own daughter, Rut) wanders a vast, muddy field at twilight, eagerly calling “cows!” and “horses!” at the animals milling around. As the light dims and a thunderstorm gathers, she begins to call for humans who aren’t there. It’s spooky, haunting, terribly sad, and as good as any opening I’ve seen this year.
“Post Tenebras Lux” concerns an architect who’s moved his family to the remote Mexican countryside. Like a jumbled-up set of nesting boxes, the scenes make sense individually (kind of). The hard part is fitting them together.
If you’re the sort who sees a bright-red, anatomically correct Satan wander into a house at night carrying a toolbox, and awaits explanation — he’s fixing the faucets? — this is not the film for you. Reygadas explains nothing, nor does he want anyone to “care about the characters,” one of whom throttles a whimpering dog (probably) to death.
Gradually the film takes on themes of creativity and violence, and what both things do to a family. Magnificent landscapes are filmed through a lens that blurs the edges — like the bottom of a bottle, alcohol being one of many motifs. For those willing to lock into Reygadas’ mad wavelength, the beauty is worth the puzzlement.