A game of dominoes frames these four interlocking stories, intriguingly adapted from a novel by Egyptian Nobel Prize–winner Naguib Mahfouz to a milieu of Mexico City's lovelorn and lost. A macho bar owner scolds his son for being too feminine, yet secretly seeks the company of an elegant shopboy. A young woman, abandoned by a too-moral lover, attracts the attentions of a man who is not only wealthy, but decidedly immoral. An older woman, meanwhile, seeks comfort from a lowly waiter, while two young men seek their fortunes in the United States and return home to a changed world. Director Fons delights in exposing a wide range of social taboos and hypocrisies, while the cast (including a young Salma Hayek in a star-making performance) anchors the script's many twists and turns. This is “a vibrant portrait of millennial Mexico City,” as noted by the Village Voice, replete with drunken poets, beggar kings, lonely widows, and loves that remain eternally unrequited, thanks to the failure of all things social, economic, and familial.