Julián Hernández dazzles the senses and plumbs great emotional depths with his second feature, Tracing the thrills and pains of young love with bravura technique and utter conviction, Hernández follows his A Thousand Clouds of Peace with another gay fantasy awash in romanticism, sexual abandon and the despair of longing, Jonas and Gerardo are university students who share a ravishing love for one another, Classes, study sessions and evenings at the bar merely punctuate their impassioned lovemaking, which fills their senses and imaginations — until the day Jonas' attentions turn to another young man, beginning a slow withering of his affection for his lover. Horrified and defiant, Gerardo is in store for a vertiginous drop that neither he nor Jonas has the power to prevent. Hope of new happiness appears in the person of Sergio, who has long watched Gerardo from afar, But is Sergio anything more than a stand-in for the love that Gerardo remembers?

These quiet plot turns are electrified by Hernández's superb direction, which creates an intricate ballet of silences, glances and sexual rendezvous, filtering com­plex emotional states through subtle cinematography, superb sound design and a gorgeous but restrained color palate, The film's sophistication and beauty make it a noteworthy contribution to Mexican cinema and place it in meaningful dialogue with great works of con­temporary European and Asian filmmaking.