Él

This is a study of “mad love” gone truly mad amidst the neurotic compulsions of the haute bourgeoisie. The protagonist, Francisco, is a forty-year-old virgin holding out for perfect—and perfectly respectable—love. Francisco’s apparent self-possession masks a ruthless severity, and his romanticism girdles insane misogyny. He takes a young wife, who tries to adjust to the tyranny of his jealous behavior, until the evening he enters her room with some menacing instruments. “The influence of de Sade is everywhere apparent in a scenario that the majority of the Mexican public took for a run-of-the-mill melodrama on jealousy,” wrote the Surrealist Ado Kyrou.