Writer/Director/Producer Marcel Sisniega is a chess Grandmaster, the most renowned whom has been developed within Mexico for many years. He has been engaged in the composition of feature films as a latter day vocation, and has enjoyed some popular success with them; therefore, his scenario for this piece expectedly offers elements that promise to reward a viewer's attention - a quest by the female lead to discover personal spiritual truths; her research into, including weighty symbolic references, pre-Columbian myth; bland erotic episodes with a pair of lovers; an on screen murder; thorny family relationships; emotionally charged interaction with a number of local, and clearly eccentric characters, etc., and all of this with volcanic Mount Popocatepetl picturesquely burbling and rumbling in the background. Yet, even a viewer's staunchest effort to interpret the work will be but poorly recompensed by sluggish narrative movement that masks what could very well be the finer points of Sisniega's film game, as a result leaving these, to say the least, quite likely to prove elusive to an audience. Action opens with Anacruz (Mariana Gaja), a university student motoring to a hillside vacation home within the state of Puebla, accompanied by a lover and seeking a secluded location in order to complete a "thesis" that relates of indigenous Indio mythology that predates the Spanish occupation of Mexico and, while there, having separated from her boyfriend, Anacruz receives visitors - a longtime elderly friend and her alcoholic son who knew her parents during the years when they lived there; her father along with his fresh young bride; a second lover (married), and so on. When alone, and not actively scratching away at her academic project, to pass time she ambles about the largely unpopulated and wind-swept region nearby that is tatted with the titular black sandy sediment deposited by the looming volcano. The film is consistently engrossing because a viewer will be in a condition of suspense, hoping in fact to learn of what may be an eventual outcome to the enigmatic affair, although one is apt to feel victimized, since there is none. At the outset, dialogue between Anacruz and her primary beau indicates that this could be one of the Christian flavoured cinematic tracts that occasionally appear, but slackly temperate sexual activity quickly dispels that possibility, and soon torpid pacing and maladroit editing bring about what becomes merely an episodic affair that would seem to lack a point of view. Minimalist scoring contributes to a mood of extreme austerity. It is naturally conceivable that undue cutting through the distributor has adversely affected the production's final print. The DVD package provides only trivial extras, but both visual and audio clarity are quite fine.
