Winner of a Special Mention at last year's Venice Film Festival, Virgin of Lust is a deliciously sordid work from the father figure of Mexican cinema, Arturo Ripstein (Ruination of Men, MIFF 2001).

Mexico in the 40s. 'El Makado' is a reserved and lonely waiter, working at the Ofelia Cafe, a bar where exiled Spanish politicians meet. In his spare time, he withdraws to his room above the cafe, poring over his collection of pornographic photographs and playing opera records. One evening he meets Lola, a prostitute, and he offers his bed, so she can sleep off a drunken stupor. Lola, prone to unpredictable and self-destructive behaviour soon recognises El Makado's sado­masochistic tendencies, and decides to turn him into her slave. The hapless waiter is besotted with the fiery, sexually irrepressible Lola, and will do anything to gain her love. Even kill General Franco.

Unpredictable, theatrical and infused with an erotic charge, Virgin of Lust is another dynamic entry in the incomparable canon of Ripstem's work.