Mariana Mariana

This 1987 Mexican film is set in Mexico City in the forties. Carlos, a schoolboy, falls in love with Mariana, the mother of his closest friend, and when he says so the reaction around him shakes the order of the family. The screenplay is adapted from José Emilio Pacheco's short novel Battles in the Desert, written for the screen by Vicente Leñero. The narrative keeps to the boy's view and supplies the politics of the period in the background, through fragments of radio and newspaper. José Estrada was to have directed; when he died days before shooting, Alberto Isaac completed the project. The tone is nostalgic but critical, showing the hypocrisy of the adults rather than gilding the past. Who it's for: those who like Mexican literary adaptation and period films. Who it's not for: viewers uncomfortable with a child's love for an adult as subject; the film places it at the centre.