Broken Sky

Mexico’s arty-gay-soap-opera auteur Julin Hernndez tortures viewers as thoroughly as he does narrative and genre conventions in this punishingly long, overabstracted first-romance tale. Virtually dialogue-free, the film tracks the affair of a pair of university lads (Hoppe and Arroyo) via meandering sequences of them in bed, clubhopping or killing time before going back to bed or hopping to another club. Hernndez aims for something transcendent la Apichatpong Weerasethakul (who gets a blatant nod), but not even cinematographer Alejandro Cantu’s rapturous camerawork can make up for the whimsy-deprived pretentiousness or overall tedium. (Opens Fri; Quad.) — Mark Holcomb