This fifth feature by the brilliant Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso is his first with professional actors and a period setting, yet it meshes thematically with his other work.

Alonso sustains an atmosphere of otherworldly immanence in a vivid setting, with a style involving long takes with characters posed as if in tableaux vivants.

Viewers who can accept a defiantly slow pace, a few loose plot threads and a directorial style that works by intimation, will be rewarded.

[Lisando Alonso's] long, lingering shots remain even after the characters have left the frame, as if contemplating the transience of life. That may sound pretentious; I find it beautiful and haunting.