The loneliness of urban existence and the search for love are hardly new topics. So what makes Ernesto Contreras’ Blue Eyelids (released in selected cinemas 8 May by Axiom Films)so arresting, I ask myself, as the credits roll. What is so intriguing about watching two lonely, and essentially dull people fumbling through life and trying to stave off the loneliness of existence? The lead performances of Cecelia Suárez and Enrique Arreola are certainly memorable. It seems an unlikely casting choice as Suárez is delicate and exceptionally pretty and Arreola rather rugged. Both manage to tone themselves down however, and are thoroughly believable as the rather pathetic antiheros, Marina and Victor, who share about as much charisma as a damp day.

Marina (Cecelia Suárez) leads a solitary life in a Mexican megalopolis - with more than a passing resemblance to Mexico City. She ekes out a narrow existence working in a uniform factory. After work she returns to her lifeless flat where she lives alone. One day she wins the company competition for an all expenses paid trip to a beach resort for two. The only problem is that she has no friends and no one she wants to go with. Then she meets Victor (Enrique Arreola) in a café. Such is Marina’s removal from social intercourse that Victor has to remind her they went to school together. Marina can’t even remember the names of any of their classmates and is incapable of joining Victor in reminiscing about their shared past. She decides to invite him on the holiday anyway.

Slowly a relationship develops between the pair. This is a relationship of long silences, frequently repeated platitudes, shyness and teenage awkwardness. Neither character displays the faintest hint of worldliness or experience in matters of the heart. Despite their obvious lack of personality, both display an extreme tenderness, all the more poignant through Contreras’ intelligent portrayal of a monotonous urban existence. The characters’ simplicity and their obvious lack of charm is perhaps the most charming aspect of the film and makes for some darkly comic moments.

Perhaps, for Western audiences, part of the intrigue lies in the snapshot of forgotten lives in an alien city. Contreras’ urban dystopia is a far cry from the more chaotic vision of recent Mexican filmmakers such as Alejandro González Iñarritu (21 Grams). Contreras’ blue shades and claustrophobic mise-en-scene are deeply introverted. Aficianados of Mexican film will be familiar with an altogether more extrovert cityscape of life and death struggle, with little time for delicate expositions of the heart. The violent side of Mexican cities has been well documented in a spate of critically acclaimed films over the last decade. Notable amongst these are La Zona (2007), Y tu mamá Tambíen (2001) and Amores Perros (2000). These films have shown the brawn, blood and guts of contemporary urban life in Mexico. Blue Eyelids is more elegiac: a poetic study on loneliness and the struggle of two souls to unite in a solitary world.  

Words > Luke Roberts