Just a week after the release of exhilarating organised crime epic "City of God" comes another impressive example of New Latin American cinema.
Written and directed by Mexican Marysa Sistach, this Oscar-nominated drama draws on a true-life story.
It offers a powerful critique of a brutally exploitative, macho society in which women are disdainfully treated as inferior citizens.
The central characters in "Perfume de Violetas" are two teenage girls, who become close friends at secondary school in Mexico City. The rebellious Yessica (Ximena Ayala) endures an impoverished home life. She is scorned and insulted by her new stepfather and his son Jorge (Luis Fernando Peña).
Meanwhile Miriam (Nancy Gutiérrez) lives with her over protective single-mother Alicia (Arcelia RamÃrez) in a more affluent neighbourhood.
Yessica is trying to conceal the fact that she is being raped by Jorge's bus-driver colleague on a regular basis. Her behaviour around her only friend becomes increasingly erratic. Not only does she steal a bottle of perfume from a crowded market-stall (for which Miriam takes the rap) but Alicia's savings mysteriously disappear...
To her credit Sistach avoids overblown melodrama and simplistic preaching in favour of a more restrained and observational approach to her material.
From the opening scene in the school playground, it's a film filled with images of exclusion and entrapment. The repeated framing of figures behind windows, fences, and bars help convey the separation of the characters from a cruel adult world.
There are fine performances from the female leads, as young women whose intense companionship is doomed to tragedy.
Spanish with English subtitles.
Perfume de Violetas (2003)
