I walked out of this film thinking “Beautiful. Profound. I have no idea what it’s about.”

I wish I could have stayed for the Q&A with director Natalia López Gallardo as she may have been able to bring some clarity. While introducing the film, she said, “It’s not a film that carries you by the hand. You have to walk alone a little” and she was not wrong.

It took me a while to get my bearings with the various characters we meet, to the point where I have learned more from reading the film synopsis than I did watching the whole film. This is partly due to stretches of dialogue being spoken off camera, focus remaining static or lighting being low so detail is indistinct, and the narrative bouncing between different stories so it’s hard to find a connection. The dreamlike camerawork, ethereal and gritty locations and ambiguous characters feel like a series of moods and emotions – grief, fear, shame, love. The lack of narrative clarity could be deliberate – forcing us into an uncomfortable space where answers aren’t clear and solutions are unreachable – but it could also be a first film lack of ability to give enough of a thread to keep the viewer engaged.

We are in a Mexican village where a woman, Isabel (Nailea Norvind), has returned with her children. I spent the film thinking she was self-harming but it’s possible she was trying to find out what has happened to housekeeper Maria’s (Antonia Olivares) sister or maybe both. There’s a police chief, Torta (Aida Roa), who is angry at her son Adan’s (Juan Daniel García Treviño) involvement with a drug cartel but it’s also possible that the police have long been in cahoots with the cartel. There’s a scene at the end (in the photo above) that is awful and beautiful and I’ve no idea what its relevance is.

The title comes from a Buddhist parable where a poor man is oblivious to the precious jewel that a wealthy friend has sewn into his robe. It’s a teaching about being unaware of true potential and so being satisfied with less. While watching the film I thought it referred to the man on fire as he looks like he is wearing a coat of stars but I can see this theme in small moments – Torta not appreciating her son, Isabel ignoring her children – and in the broader understanding of Mexico.

Even though I found this frustrating, I am interested to see how López Gallardo develops as a storyteller.

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Image via miff.com.au