Post Tenebras Lux

Carlos Reygadas is not telling a story here, he is rendering a memory. A well-off family living in the Mexican countryside, the villagers around them, childhood, violence and fragments of dream are laid out without being joined up. It opens with a small girl wandering a field among animals as a storm comes in; later a red, glowing devil walks into a house carrying a toolbox. The image is strange too: a special lens doubles and blurs the edges of the frame, forcing the viewer to keep looking at the centre. It won the director's prize at Cannes and was booed at the same festival. Who it is for: viewers willing to feel a film rather than solve it, and open to formal risk. Who it is not for: anyone looking for connective tissue and explanation, since neither is offered.