Castle of Purity

A leading luminary of New Mexican Cinema, Arturo Ripstein (The Realm of Fortune, Deep Crimson) began his career as an assistant to Buñuel, and may be his country’s truest heir to the surrealist master’s mantle. Castle of Purity, a bizarre, subversive drama in the Buñuelian mode, concerns Lima, an obsessively overprotective father determined to insulate his family from evils of the outside world. A father of three, Lima has kept his family locked up in their deteriorating Mexico City mansion since the birth of his first child 18 years before. His efforts to shield them from impurity and corruption are imperilled by the increasingly incestuous relationship between two of his teenaged children; meanwhile, the family’s livelihood — the production of rat poison — is threatened by official scrutiny. Famed Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco co-wrote the script. The film won the Golden Ariel, Mexican cinema’s highest honour. Dogtooth, a prize-winning Greek film with an eerily similar premise, was prominent on the international festival circuit in 2009. Ripstein was awarded Mexico’s National Prize for the Arts in 1997, the only filmmaker aside from Buñuel to receive that distinction. Colour, 35mm, in Spanish with English subtitles. 110 mins.