LOVE, PAIN & VICE VERSA

Night after exhausting night, Chelo's dreams are haunted by handsome,mysterious man with whom she is completely in love. Their heated affair fills her with a passion that turns to longing when the alarm sounds. His nightly appearances begin to take a toll on her personal life, and after a year of dreaming she finds that no flesh-and-blood man can compete with the seductive stranger of her dreams. Though her friends think that her devotion to a nonexistent lover is insane, Chelo will move heaven and earth to find the man who is her destiny. But when she comes close to finding him, more powerful forces intervene and turn her dreams to nightmares. This hypnotic sexual thriller, one of a new genre of commercially savvy Mexican productions, takes the audience on a dark journey through a psychological hall of mirrors. Director Alfonso Pineda-Ulloa jumps back and forth in time and in and out of dreams until the line between the real and the imagined is irrevocably blurred. Actress Bárbara Mori (La Mujer de mi Hermano) is sultry and enchanting as the obsessive Chelo. Seemingly ever-present rain and eerie light infuse the film with a moodiness complemented by stark framing. Pineda-Ulloa reveals himself to be an expert architect of the thriller, leading viewers with every twist of the plot further into an intricately constructed maze. This Hitchcockian puzzler probes the shadowy recesses of love and obsession while exploring with unflinching intensity the fateful link between two strangers.