Blue Eyelids

Directed with considerable maturity and refined delicacy by debutant Ernesto Contreras, this low-key lonely-hearts charmer outlines the coming together of two needy but awkwardly independent Mexico City singles. When self-contained twentysomething Marina (Cecilia Suárez) wins a two-week holiday for two, she invites old school friend Victor (Enrique Arreola) to accompany her.

The movie’s pleasures reside in the director and actors’ gentle ability to privilege the unexpected and to embrace the banal in the pair’s halting dalliance. They capture the pains, fears and difficulties of budding relationships, alongside a droll acceptance of the hesitations and barriers we all place in the way of new love. Ably mounted and shot, ‘Blue Eyelids’ is a welcome cliché-free zone, often touching and occasionally very funny, played out in a minor register suitable for the lives it describes.