Film Review: Blue Eyelids (Parpados Azules)

I believe today’s showing in Manchester’s Cornerhouse was the first of a run of dates in the UK that culminates at Oxford’s Ultimate Picture Palace on August 31st. I was among eight people who showed up for this screening. I hope that a momentum builds for this Mexican film as it is deserves a bigger audience.

Marina works in a garment factory in Mexico City. She lives in a cheerless apartment. When the factory’s owner Lulita calls her workforce in to announce who, of the factory’s workers, has had their name picked out of the hat for winning a luxury holiday away, Marina’s name is called out. The camera lingers as employees' heads shuffle about then focuses on Marina as she timidly raises her hand. It's apparent that she would rather she didn’t win.

Having won a pair of tickets, Marina is left in a quandary as to whom, if anyone is to accompany her. She invites her sister who subsequently ostracizes her after being unable to cheekily displace Marina in favour of her husband. In a café Marina meets Victor, a former school peer who works in a similarly mundane job and dwells in a similarly drab apartment. Life has dealt a harsh hand to both these characters who find themselves largely friendless and many a film viewer may be hoping that these two hook up. Marina offers Victor her other ticket and we wait for them to switch from the grim, dingy environment they inhabit to the sunny bright lights of their holiday resort.

In a series of awkward meetings in the run-up to the holiday it is apparent that the course of their relationship does not run smooth. During a picnic, Marina’s mind drifts abstractly as she picks at the weaves of cotton. Yet there are potential ties that bind such as that their shared song – a fine Ray Davies penned tune – and cinema attending moments, the latter of which inspires them to attend a Dance night. When the pair find themselves displaced from their table close to the dance floor, there is one of many moments where the actions slows down and expressions are caught in freeze-frame, illuminating the characters state of mind.

There are no clichés in this film. It swings between will they/won’t they elope? There are some interspersed scenes of the factory owner Lulita letting her true passions – her caged birds - fly off into the ether. Will, the film asks by implication, Maria let her prospective lover go? This is an absorbing film, without cliché, right to the very end.