This accomplished second feature by a young Catalan director puts to shame the usual contrived plots about the connection between children and adults. His exceptional use of Spanish landscapes, full of stone pits and olive-lined terraces, recalls the Japanese masters as much as the plot recalls Kiarostami. Angel, a young boy still unable to grasp the separation-if any-between reality, magic, and religion, lives in a remote village with his flirtatious sister Dolors and old grandmother while his mother works in a faraway circus. The mostly lonely inhabitants of the town, with their stories and dreams, cross paths on mountain roads or in the always rowdy local pub, as the film weaves between reality and fantasy, drama and comedy.