Blue Eyelids review

Winning an all-expenses-paid trip for two to an idyllic beach resort hardly seems cause for a downer.

But in Mexican director Ernesto Contreras’ sparse, offbeat debut it merely increases mousy factory worker Marina’s (Cecilia Suárez) solitude as she has no one to take... until she runs into long-forgotten schoolmate Victor (Enrique Arreola) and in desperation invites him along.

A predictable romcom ending would be too upbeat for this bleak riff on loneliness and the delusions of fantasy.

Any moments of humour barely lift the melancholy mood, underscored by emotive music and a desolate subplot about a sad old woman surrounded by caged birds.

Carmen Gray