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Considering Ripstein one of the favorite modern Mexican filmmakers, hopes for "La seducción" must be great. It has some major topics of his career, like domination throw sexual roles, a certain critic to moral, religion and institutions with a taste of tragedy for example. It is an interesting thriller during a rural religious war, the perfect ambient to develop these topics, but, being honest, not totally achieve compared to his big hits of two previous years, "Cadena perpetua", "La tía Alejandra" or "El lugar sin límites".

Experimented actors Katy Jurado, with an outstanding performance, and Gonzalo Vega, try to shelter Viridiana Alatriste first film protagonist, sadly Viridiana never shines. She doesn't expelled the sensuality required for this character. The whole movie must gravitate around her but she fails in intensity and sex appeal. The movie is still watchable but it could be much better.

"Bandera rota" (something like "Broken Flag") has many elements of Gabriel Retes' movies, in a genre film, a thriller: beautiful presence of Tina Romero, an artistic project (a movie in this case,, furthermore, its production is stopped by money problems), critic of social, political or economical situation in contemporary Mexico from a middle class point of view and social class or ideological conflicts, for example. Retes' characters are the voice of his very personal and critical explanations of main social problems in Mexico.

The importance of movies, media in general, and possession of important information are the elements used by Retes to develop an interesting thriller. Personal interests of characters are mixed and confused with their ideologies, giving them certain profundity, enough to maintain our interest.

This is not a great movie, but has an interesting story and it is easy to watch. Dialogues are very natural with realistic intentions (specially inside the crew of filmmakers), but this realistic motif has the inconvenient of a very lazy use of the camera, a little boring. In my opinion images could've talk more.

Violence is well manage, in the exact moment and amount, also crude and realistic, with, maybe, some memorable scenes of "Bandera rota" showing a not very common face of Retes' skills.