A sentimental look at love and middle-aged discontent thinly disguised as a comic adventure story, based on Spanish novelist Rosa Montero's best-selling La hija del caníbal; director Antonio Serrano relocates the tale from Madrid to Mexico City, but the themes are universal. Children's author Lucia (Cecilia Roth) and her dull husband, Ramon (Jose Elias Moreno), an assistant treasury clerk, are embarking on a Brazilian vacation when he vanishes from the airport bathroom. Though less devastated by Ramon's disappearance than by the sudden insight that she's no lonelier with him gone than she was with him safe at home, she sets about trying to find him. A voicemail ransom message followed by Ramon's call telling her where to find a safety deposit box packed with cash are Lucia's first clues that her husband had a secret second life. With suspiciously convenient timing, Lucia's neighbor, 74-year-old former Spanish revolutionary Felix (Carlos Alvarez Novoa), shows up offering help. Another neighbor, Adrian (Kuno Becker), a hopeless romantic in his 20s, comes to their rescue when thugs try to steal the cash. United by loneliness and the desire for a little adventure, the trio butts heads with the police, tries to deliver the money and discovers Ramon's possible link to a Marxist terrorist organization. But none of this really matters. Adrian and Felix have moved in to Lucia's apartment, they're all falling in love with their new family unit and no one's especially eager to find Ramon. Felix shares melancholy recollections of his outlaw past (Serrano glosses over these stories, the novel's highlight, rather quickly), while Adrian waxes philosophical between sighs and longing gazes at Lucia. She initially shrugs off his advances, but blossoms as she starts believing his ardor is genuine. As the story veers dangerously close to soap opera territory, Serrano throws in some stylistic curve balls: "I've been lying to you," Lucia tells viewers. "I'm really a redhead." And with that, her appearance and apartment change without warning. Intended to comment on issues subjective self-image, such jarring distancing devices function primarily as comic relief. Roth, who played a similarly introspective role in ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999), is convincing as the repressed woman revitalized by her unconventional friends, though Lucia's self-pity is often grating. Charming newcomer Becker steals the scenes with a single, soulful glance, and when the three are together it's hard not to wish the kidnapping plot would go away to leave more screen time for their warm and fuzzy moments. (In Spanish, with English subtitles.) --Sabrina Rojas Weiss
