- guardian.co.uk, Monday May 16 2005 00.09 BST
But the film, Batalla en el Cielo (Battle in Heaven), had attracted controversy for its highly explicit sexual content even before its premiere in Cannes.
The film opens with a shot of a scruffily bearded man's face, expressionless behind his aviator spectacles. The camera pans down his utterly still body - his flabby upper arms, his immense belly - to reveal the head of a young girl, who is enthusiastically performing fellatio on him. As the camera pans round to her face, a tear drops from her eye.
Director Carlos Reygadas, hugely admired for his Cannes debut feature Japón in 2002, has dissociated the film entirely from pornography. "The whole of the world is involved in sex: that's how we continue," he said yesterday. "What happens during sex, how people communicate - that's what the film is about."
The film is set in an unforgiving Mexico City. Marcos and his wife have kidnapped a baby - but the child has died. Meanwhile Ana, the daughter of the general whom Marcos works for as a driver, prostitutes herself for pleasure.
"Seeing a young, pretty, well-off woman (Ana) suck off a poor and older man (Marcos) can be really upsetting for some people in the audience," Reygadas said.
"On the surface, the shock is aesthetic, but in fact the taboo is much deeper. It's about social differences. If the man were a rich drug trafficker ... they'd just think the girl was a prostitute. I'm not being provocative gratuitously, but to unleash strong feelings in the viewer."
