Blue Eyelids

Marina wins a holiday for two in a raffle at work. The problem is that there is nobody to take. Having found no one, she asks Victor, a man she meets in a café who says he knows her from school and whom she does not remember at all. Between now and the departure date the two of them try to get to know each other. Ernesto Contreras directs, in his first feature. Cecilia Suárez plays Marina and Enrique Arreola plays Victor. It was Suárez's first lead. The tone is deliberately flat. Nobody states a feeling, no scene rises, and the comedy comes entirely out of silence. The references are open: the deadpan of Aki Kaurismäki and Tsai Ming-liang is directly visible. The subject is loneliness, and the film refuses to present it as pathetic. Marina and Victor do not fall in love. Two lonely people sit in the same room for a while, and even that is difficult for them. It screened in Critics' Week at Cannes in 2007 and took a special jury prize at Sundance. Mexican cinema at the time was dominated by hard, violent films. This stands somewhere else entirely. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet deadpan humour and Latin American independent cinema. Who it is not for: nothing happens, deliberately. For anyone wanting event or emotional lift it is very still.