4/5 No Past and No Future
  by Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas)
"Limbo"

No Past and No Future

Amos Lassen


Limbo is usually defined as the state of nothingness and in this limbo we have a firth grader who is gay and somehow finds himself in a hospital that is not of this world--there is no past and no future there. This is the mystery of this film that works like a dream. We go along with director Horacio Rivera's into the world of the undead as a way to look at the issue of being different. Isao is an effeminate young boy who enjoys dressing up, carrying a doll and he dreams about becoming a Parisian fashion designer. After having been attacked by his pedophiliac gym teacher he is left for dead but he wakes up in a hospital that is strangely silent and staffed by a male nurse and an administrator who is never seen. He is soon joined by a lawyer who has been shot in the head and he tries to get his questions answered by the nurse and from the lawyer. They discover that they are in that room where one waits before going either to heaven or to hell and are soon joined by Isao's best friend and a janitor who is blind but seems to know something about ghosts who have not found rest. We are with Isao as he embarks upon maturity in the other world.
The film is well done even if the plot is a bit contrived but it is a welcome addition to our canon from Mexico.