The Empty Hours

Sebastián is seventeen. He is minding his uncle's motel on an empty stretch of the Veracruz coast, where nobody comes. The days pass with nothing in them. Then Miranda arrives, a woman who comes to the motel regularly and waits there for her lover. The man is always late, or does not come at all. While she waits, she and Sebastián start talking. The difference in their ages, their histories and the things each is waiting for all sit there in the open, and something forms anyway. Aarón Fernández Lesur directs, with Kristyan Ferrer as Sebastián and Adriana Paz as Miranda. It is Mexican and runs a hundred minutes. It is a film not of events but of waiting, and all its weight is in the quiet hours.