Our Time

All been said before, right, especially as regards adultery in the cultured classes?

Not with Reygadas. Here's a man who's really prepared to give the genres a nudge, really has the chops to pull it off.

Starting with no intro, and seemingly innocent scenes of kids playing at a lake, Reygadas carries 170 stylish minutes better than most directors carry 90.

There is a narrative arc, but Our Time deliberately operates at its edges. Characters argue off screen. Husband writes to wife. Does same, to wife's lover. Daughter comes on, for a couple of voice-overs. There's horse- and cow-play aplenty, often bearing a jagged relation to what's going down with the humans.

Reygadas still needs his get-out-of-jail card, to take the movie to the next level. This arrives with a late detonation, when the husband visits a dying friend.

As a full on movie addict, it's a surprise to feel sudden tears, in real time. This did it for me. One to remember.

As an Australian watching this narrative unfold in a Mexican life unknown to me was both refreshing and original. Especially the cinematography and slow yet precise direction. Kudos.

Last month each viewing of The Souvenir lifted me one step into an aesthetic that I couldn't initially appreciate. And now it's happening again, with Our Time, by Carlos Reygadas. (The reviews on Metacritic are abysmally low.)

My first viewing, last night, was similar to that of at least one reviewer. In the middle of an interesting or puzzling shot, your heart breaks open and you haven't the faintest idea why. Has the spaciousness of the landscape prepared you? Or the passage of time? Or the tension? At the end (or in my case, as always, the next morning) you are left with such sadness. For...? For the human condition?

In his first sentence one reviewer calls the film "spiritual." Yes, at times wasn't there the sense of something beneath the surface, silent, all-embracing? Needs to be seen again.

Carlos Reygadas movies are a bit of a hit or miss with me. He's also an acquired taste as all of his movies are very different from mainstream movies and I understand if they rub people the wrong way. The deliberate pacing, the graphic sex scenes, the rural setting are enough reasons to discourage some people but, if it has an interesting story behind all this I usually like his movies. And I'm glad to say that this one is a winner for me. Again, most of his trademarks are there, and it is a three hour movie but I found this marriage story to be very engaging. It even gains an extra layer when you realize that the actors playing the couple are real life husband and wife and he is also the director. Who needs therapy when you can lay it all bare in a movie... Anyway, it is a very well directed movie and I found the cinematography breathtaking but I think it all rests on the shoulders of both actors to carry the movie and make you care for their relationship and they completely nail it. So, if you're a bit tired of all the Hollywood same old same old you might want to give this movie a chance.

Esther is the head of a family running a cattle ranch in Mexico. She starts an affair with a ranch hand. Her husband Juan has to deal with their open relationship and her volatility.

This reminds me a lot of Terrence Malick. It's like the filmmaker is trying to be the Mexican Malick. It's not everyone's taste. I would skip the more experimental shots like the mechanical insides of the vehicle. I get his intention to make the sex more brutal and less romantic. The horse goring scene is truly shocking. I had to stop because I lost the thread of the story. I kept thinking if they used a real horse. It looks so real. My main issue with this movie is that it mainly follows the wrong character. Juan's emotional journey is the main story and it holds the possibility of a great shock ending. I thought that the horse goring is some sort of foreshadowing. All in all, the filmmaking is masterful. The subject matter is interesting. It is long at three hours. That probably drove away most people.