Mexican screenwriter Arriaga (Amores Perros
; 21 Grams
) constructs a humid, schematic novel—his first published in the U.S.—and maneuvers his characters in a duplicitous web of betrayal and insanity. Narrator Manuel, a university student in Mexico City, mourns the suicide of his best friend, Gregorio, whose girlfriend Tania he's been having an affair with for two years. (Manuel is also having recreational sex with Gregorio's sister, Margarita.) But after Gregorio's slow, fatal descent into madness, his death brings no closure for his guilty friends. Instead, Manuel still fears malice from Gregorio, who leaves him a box of papers "impregnated with vengeance" and torments him with "insane, exact triangulations" by proxy, through a friend of Gregorio from the mental institution. Manuel's behavior grows increasingly erratic and belligerent, while the women in the novel remain inscrutable and reactive ciphers: smooth, desirable bodies; objects of love or lust; excuses the young men use for rage or passion. Arriaga's ominous vision is total—perhaps better material for an atmospheric, tightly structured film than for this unsubtle, claustrophobic novel. (May)
