michaelj108

Recommended for adults. This is a diamond in the rough. It glitters with the intensity of the narrative and of the two lead players: The crippled man and the guilt-ridden girl, he nearly psychotic and she certainly neurotic, each with good reason.

What's to like?

• liked the living Jupiter in the opening sequence. • liked the video boxing scene. • liked the essay about the losers people who go first. • liked the other earth hanging in the sky ever an invitation to think twice. • liked the chance meeting with a one-time high school class mate at the convenience store and his incomprehension that she is a janitor and her directness in saying so. • liked the working class side of New Haven in the fall and winter as a setting. Barren, foggy, hard, bleak.... Yet the spring will come. • liked the saw concert for one. • liked that there was no resolution at the end just more questions and I really liked the very end but cannot talk about it without spoiling it. It was quite unexpected and yet dead obvious, both at once.

Cryptic and enigmatic at times, but it assumes an audience of adults who will not implode if everything isn't rammed home with shouting, primary colors, and capital letters, an audience of adults who might think about what is going on. The air of mystery that hangs over the film adds to its forlorn appeal. For example, the elderly janitor? His suicide attempt makes no sense and does not relate to either the major theme (the other Earth that is within us all) or the minor theme (the relationship of the wounded man and broken girl).

Rough edges shows in some of the photography and camera work. Please use a tripod in the future.

Based on the premise of labor without laborers. The usual Mexican preoccupations with El Norte are there, but nicely balanced and understated. No preaching.

It depicts a future only a few minutes away from today. Mexicans work in Mexico controlling via the internet robots in the USA that do everything from construction to nannies. They use Waldo's plugged into their nervous system. But there is no surfeit of tech-speak. A peon from the arid interior comes to Tijuana at the now completely closed USA border to work in one of the implant factories. He meets a writer who sells stories, memories. The drone operator who killed the peon's father seeks him out through the writer.

Understated and visually dark, but arresting and unpredictable.

Euripides pared to the essentials. Not one word, not one gesture is wasted. Nor is there ever an iota more than necessary.

A stark, spare study of despair in a sun blasted landscape that seems to watch over the pathetic efforts of humans with equal measures of timeless indifference and utter contempt. The characters in the story, the actors on the screen, and we in audience know what will happen next; but we are all powerless to prevent it. It is so intense that it makes Shakespeare's 'King Lear' seem almost frivolous.

It takes five minutes for the first two words to be spoken. 'Strike him!' Everything flows from that line. Another ten minutes of near silence passes before Electra appears. Her back to the camera, she turns to look over her shoulder - electricity is discharged. The audience gasps. Nothing is said but the implacable will is communicated. Nothing good is going to happen next.

It is almost a silent movie. They certainly have faces, to quote Gloria Graham from 'Sunset Boulevard.' By looks, by camera angles, by gestures, by the tensing of shoulders, the widening of eyes, make-up, fine photography, tight cutting, and very few words the tragedy unfolds.

It is always about Electra, to be sure, and Irene Pappas is a force of nature on the screen. She says little but each move, gesture, look, and word is supercharged.

Recommended for adults.