Film Forum

Veteran auteur and master of the Mexican bizarre, Arturo Ripstein (DEEP CRIMSON) – an influence on a generation of his country’s directors – plunges into a Mexico City demimonde of crime, prostitution, and luchador wrestling. The film’s luscious black-and-white cinematography recounts a true crime story of twin mini-luchadores (who never remove their masks), the mother who adores them, and two prostitutes whose best days are long behind them. Ripstein imbues his Bunuelian tableaux with both empathy and dark humor. 

MEXICO / SPAIN • 2015 •  99 MINS.  • IN SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
LEISURE TIME FEATURES
 

Special deals on delicious local Mexican cuisine with your BLEAK STREET ticket stub!
Free elote or Mexican street corn  with $15+ food purchase Valid through 2/9	2-for-1 margaritas or micheladas Valid through 2/2	10% off total bill (with meal purchase) (Thompson Street location) Valid through 2/2

Reviews

“Creepy and beguiling. Turns a lurid tabloid true-crime story into a somber, surreal, monochromatic dream… unfolds in a stylized world that recalls old movies and pulp novels… Ripstein’s hallucinatory, deliberate style is engrossing…full of strange, vivid images and scenes.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times

TOP 10 FILMS OF 2015!
– James Quandt, Artforum

“A VISIONARY TRIUMPH.”
– Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

“A lunatic swirl into the hopes, kinks, and day-to-day hustle of a handful of Mexico City characters so colorful, the pic’s black-and-white cinematography merely amplifies their eccentricities. Between its pint-sized pugilists, cross-dressing philanderers and desperate old whores, this carnivalesque group portrait might easily be mistaken for some lost Fellini project, were it not for the twist that this phantasmagoric true-crimer wasn’t dreamed up by its director…but pulled from the pages of the local newspaper.”
– Peter Debruge, Variety

“(Ripstein’s) best film in years... More than any living director, Ripstein has taken up the mantle of his friend and early mentor Luis Buñuel, whose tenure in the Mexican film industry during its peak years represents his most prolific period. Like those characters in Buñuel’s Mexico City-set landmark LOS OLVIDADOS (1950), the denizens of BLEAK STREET are damned by immovable class barriers and a cruelty that circulates not only from the top down but from within their own ranks—like Buñuel gives voice to the poor without sentimentalizing them. BLEAK STREET’s insistent humor, oneiric slippage, and stylistic mischief all recall Buñuel. They also represent the aggregate of much of what’s best in Ripstein’s oeuvre.”
– Jose Teodoro, Cinema Scope