La perdición de los hombres

Alongside the Golden Shell and the Fipresci Prize, with his latest film, the Mexican veteran Ripstein also won the jury prize for the best script at the San Sebastian Film Festival. The cinematographically simple approach – four long scenes, shot in black & white with DV cameras (but you have to be told before you would know) – gives the text written by his wife and regular scriptwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego the space it deserves. The anarchist humour and the opulent literary style ensure a fresh and strangely timeless film, with which Ripstein visibly pays homage to his old master Buñuel.La perdición de los hombres is set in Mexico and is about two murderers and their victim, two women who fight over the corpse and a baseball match that ends fatally. The title is from a well-known Mexican song serenading the destructive effect of women on men. The film starts on a country lane, where a man is murdered by two attackers. The victim turns out to be a bigamist. His two widows first meet at the police station, where they argue over who should get the body. However the one to get the body also has to pay for the funeral. When at last a victor emerges, she has to get the body home. To do that she asks one of the murderers – without knowing. He appears wearing the dead man’s boots. And what about that baseball game?