“Silence is a friend who’ll never betray you.”

Lucia, Lucia is a film that proves that exciting things are happening in Mexican cinema. Lucia (Cecilia Roth) is the heroine of this tangled tale, and the story begins when her husband Ramon (Jose Elias Moreno) suddenly disappears. Lucia begins receiving cryptic communications from a Maoist terrorist group called “Workers’ Pride” who demand 20 million pesos as ransom for Ramon’s return. Lucia doesn’t have that sort of money, but then the terrorists reveal that Ramon has a secret bank account that contains slightly more than that amount.

Lucia’s elderly neighbour, Felix (Carlos Alvarez-Novoa) comes to her aid. He’s a geriatric revolutionary who still has a few tricks up his sleeve. Lucia also becomes romantically entangled with a young neighbour, Adrian (Kuno Becker). The three join forces, and in their efforts to free Ramon, they come across explosive gun dealers, and bored government bureaucrats.

Part thriller, part comedy, the plot twists and turns include revelations from Lucia that she’s an unreliable narrator. She undergoes physical transformations several times as the plot develops, and she admits that part of her story is not true–she’s a frustrated would-be novelist with a tendency to be ‘creative’ with the facts. She confesses, “I’ve had other lives”, but it seems those lives have been imaginary more than anything else.

While the story spins on itself to little avail towards the end of the film, Lucia, Lucia from director Antonio Serrano has a fresh energetic approach is well worth catching if you’re a fan of Mexican cinema or a fan of the delectable Cecilia Roth–always a fascinating actress to watch. In Spanish with English subtitles.