Becloud

Writer-director Alejandro Gerber Bicecci trains his meticulous eye on a certain segment of urban, lower-middle-class Mexican life found far away from the Americanized tourist fringes south of the border in this affecting, panoramic, slice-of-life portrait of contemporary Mexico that eventually brings together three neighbors and friends who share a dark, distant history. The trio are twentysomething youths working dead-end jobs who have family lives that are equally oppressive in their own distinct ways: José (Joel Figueroa) works for his father at a car wash; sex-starved Felipe (Aldo Estuardo) lives with his mom and spends his days as an employee at an Internet café with cyber-porn and voyeuristic behavior his only social outlet; and Andrés (Roberto Mares) is verbally abused by his drunk father for his un-macho interest in Mexico's pre-Columbian past. Bicecci skillfully draws these three individuals towards one another in this potent film that mixes unflinching urban realism, weighty symbolism, and a simple but shocking plot point that starts in the desert with a baby suckling at his dead mother's breast. Highly recommended. (M. Sandlin)