El Aura

A deluded taxidermist plans the perfect crime.

For just about everybody, adolescence means having to confront a number of choices and life decisions, but rarely any as monumental as the one facing 15 year-old Alex (Ines Efron,) who was born an intersex child. As Alex begins to explore her sexuality, her mother invites friends from Buenos Aires to come for a visit at their house on the gorgeous Uruguayan shore, along with their 16-year-old son Ѕlvaro (Martin Piroyanski.) Alex is immediately attracted to the young man, which adds yet another level of complexity to her personal search for identity, and forces both families to face their worst fears.

In this black comedy, master Mexican director Arturo Ripstein (The Holy Office, Deep Crimson) presents another of his trademark looks at the twin forces of absurdity and pathos. Based on a novel by Pedro Antonio Valdez, the film weaves five episodic tales centered around a decrepit Mexican brothel run by a Chinese immigrant, Chang (Samuel Gallegos), and protested nightly by a Christian group who hopes to shut it down. Among the cast of characters who populate this modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah are Chang's long-suffering wife, an eccentric stable of hookers, and an especially seedy roster of customers (including corrupt politicians and deranged priests), resulting in a carnivalesque tapestry of the human condition.