A bleak study of loneliness set in a claustrophobic apartment in Mexico City featuring a fearless performance, or a masochistic one, take your pick, by Monica Del Carmen as Laura. Laura spends most of her days and nights in her joyless apartment spying on her neighbors and inventing relationships with them in her mind. She occasionally goes out to clubs and brings home men for unrewarding sex. They invariably leave her lonelier than before. She meets Arturo (Armando Hernandez) who brings a sado-masochistic satisfaction to her sexual life. Meanwhile she ominously checks off the dates of her calendar toward the end of the month marked in red. This film is as explicit as it needs to be and Laura's world is not easy to view. Director Michael Rowe has achieved the film he sat out to make, I'm sure, and the totality of the realism can be uncomfortable as it should be. By setting the movie entirely in the small apartment and by the astonishingly natural performance of Ms. Del Carmen, you feel, smell, and know this movie like it was a fever dream. You want to give Laura a big hug at the end. Not for the squeamish or near squeamish.
Review of Leap Year
