Carlos Reygadas

For "Battle in Heaven," as he did with his acclaimed debut feature "Japon," boldly idiosyncratic Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas asks audiences to plunge headlong into his chaotic vision of the world, no questions asked but complete trust required. Not everyone is going to be willing or able to take this leap of faith, but those who do go along with Reygadas may well feel they have come away having undergone a stunning revelatory experience.

CANNES, France - Watching a film get an award is rarely as moving and emotional as watching the film itself, but that was the experience Sunday night at the Cannes Film Festival when Michael Haneke's"Amour" won the Palme d'Or. The applause for the Austrian Haneke, who also won the Palme in 2009 for"The White Ribbon,"increased as he called onto the stage his film's pair of veteran French stars, 81-year-old Jean Louis Trintignant and 85-year old Emmanuelle Riva. "It is their film," the director said.

There are all sorts of reasons we go to the movies -- to be soothed or excited or to hide out in the dark -- but at their most sublime, film transports us out of the here and the now. It sounds corny to talk about transcendence and the movies, especially when the medium and its rituals have become so desecularized, yet the promise that a picture will carry us away sustains the movie lover's faith. Some filmmakers give us dreams and false worlds in which we can find refuge.

Carlos Reygadas admits that when he first heard the concept behind the new movie "Revolución" — a compilation of 10 short films by 10 different Mexican directors — he felt "a little reluctant" to join in. Omnibus movies, he knew, often add up to less than the sum of their parts. And the theme of this particular film came spring-loaded with significance: the legacy of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. Furthermore, the movie's release would be timed to coincide with this year's heavily hyped centennial celebrations taking place on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

OBVIOUSLY, Carlos Reygadas hasn't flown all this way from Madrid just to talk about oral sex. But lately it's been a tough subject for him to avoid. Ever since last summer, when the young Mexican writer-director's second feature film, "Batalla en el Cielo" (Battle in Heaven), played at Cannes, there's been some predictable squawking over what might be called the film's highly original opening scene.

Carlos Reygadas admits that when he first heard the concept behind the new movie "Revolución" — a compilation of 10 short films by 10 different Mexican directors — he felt "a little reluctant" to join in. Omnibus movies, he knew, often add up to less than the sum of their parts. And the theme of this particular film came spring-loaded with significance: the legacy of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. Furthermore, the movie's release would be timed to coincide with this year's heavily hyped centennial celebrations taking place on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

CANNES, France - Watching a film get an award is rarely as moving and emotional as watching the film itself, but that was the experience Sunday night at the Cannes Film Festival when Michael Haneke's"Amour" won the Palme d'Or. The applause for the Austrian Haneke, who also won the Palme in 2009 for"The White Ribbon,"increased as he called onto the stage his film's pair of veteran French stars, 81-year-old Jean Louis Trintignant and 85-year old Emmanuelle Riva. "It is their film," the director said.

Two or three years ago, if you asked the so-called Three Amigos -- Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu -- to name the most promising young contemporary Mexican director, their voices would unite in praise of Carlos Reygadas. They weren't alone in that opinion.

Claudio Caballero, an ambitious young concert promoter, uses his girlfriend's money to place a bet on a soccer game in the hopes of funding his dream to bring a U2 concert to his town. When he loses the bet, and his plan to rip-off the bookies goes awry, he is given seven days to make the concert happen or else. Such is the story of "7 Días," the disappointingly flat debut feature from Mexican writer and director Fernando Kalife.

According to the sacraments of global cinema, the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky was a kind of latter-day saint of the big screen. Exiled from his homeland, monastically devoted to his craft, he was often misunderstood by audiences baffled by his glacial panning shots and soulful effusions. His films were more exalted than actually seen, more slavishly imitated than truly assimilated. Susan Sontag cited him as a favorite filmmaker. George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh toasted his spirit with their 2002 remake of his 1972 "Solaris," itself a homage to "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Two or three years ago, if you asked the so-called Three Amigos -- Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu -- to name the most promising young contemporary Mexican director, their voices would unite in praise of Carlos Reygadas. They weren't alone in that opinion.

For "Battle in Heaven," as he did with his acclaimed debut feature "Japon," boldly idiosyncratic Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas asks audiences to plunge headlong into his chaotic vision of the world, no questions asked but complete trust required. Not everyone is going to be willing or able to take this leap of faith, but those who do go along with Reygadas may well feel they have come away having undergone a stunning revelatory experience.

OBVIOUSLY, Carlos Reygadas hasn't flown all this way from Madrid just to talk about oral sex. But lately it's been a tough subject for him to avoid. Ever since last summer, when the young Mexican writer-director's second feature film, "Batalla en el Cielo" (Battle in Heaven), played at Cannes, there's been some predictable squawking over what might be called the film's highly original opening scene.

There are all sorts of reasons we go to the movies -- to be soothed or excited or to hide out in the dark -- but at their most sublime, film transports us out of the here and the now. It sounds corny to talk about transcendence and the movies, especially when the medium and its rituals have become so desecularized, yet the promise that a picture will carry us away sustains the movie lover's faith. Some filmmakers give us dreams and false worlds in which we can find refuge.

With a title that translates as the punning "Miss Bullet," the Mexican film "Miss Bala" is based in part on the real-life story of a beauty pageant winner who was arrested alongside a drug gang and paraded before the media amid accusations of corruption behind her crown. It aims to not only be a provocative, thoughtful action film for the art house, looking at the overwhelming problems of the drug-trafficking epidemic in Mexico, but "Miss Bala" also marks an ambitiously bold step forward for director Gerardo Naranjo.

Although the four American films selected for competition at next month's Cannes International Film Festival represent the most from an individual country, selections reflect a shift back to auteurs with less of the glitz and controversy of 2004. After a grueling selection process that involved screening more than 1,500 entries from 97 countries, "there were two bits of white smoke today," festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux joked Tuesday.