Flies Review: Fernando Eimbcke's Quiet Return to Form

Is Flies good?

Yes — it’s one of the most emotionally honest Mexican dramas of the year, landing at a strong 77% Celluloid Score. Fernando Eimbcke, working in stark black and white, builds the film on two performances rather than plot mechanics: Teresita Sánchez as Olga, a woman who has organized her whole life around not feeling anything, and newcomer Bastian Escobar as Cristian, the nine-year-old who won’t let her get away with it. Critics have singled out how little the film reaches for sentiment even as it earns real tears, and the Ecumenical Jury Prize it picked up at the Berlin Film Festival reflects a consensus that this is careful, humane filmmaking rather than a tearjerker on autopilot.

What is Flies about?

A lonely woman renting out a room to cover surgery costs ends up secretly caring for a hospitalized tenant’s young son, and the arrangement cracks open a grief she’d rather have kept sealed. Olga has built her days around routine and distance since a loss the film reveals only gradually. When Tulio, her new tenant, has to leave town while his wife remains hospitalized across the street, his son Cristian is left in Olga’s reluctant, unofficial care. The film tracks the small, wordless negotiations between a woman who has decided love isn’t worth the risk and a boy who simply refuses to be ignored.

Should you watch Flies?

Yes, if you have patience for a slow-built, dialogue-light drama that trusts silence and framing over exposition. This isn’t a film that announces its themes — Eimbcke’s camera holds on faces and empty rooms, letting the audience do some of the emotional work. Viewers who loved the director’s earlier films, like Duck Season or Club Sandwich, will recognize his knack for finding warmth in awkward, unresolved domestic situations. It’s a tougher sell for anyone wanting a conventional three-act redemption story; a few critics noted that the premise itself — reluctant caregiver bonds with needy child — isn’t new, even if the execution here is unusually restrained and specific.

How does it compare to Eimbcke’s earlier work?

It’s a deliberate homecoming — after 2019’s more polished La Camarista, Eimbcke returns to the intimate, black-and-white, character-driven register of his earliest films, and critics have read it as his most fully realized work in years. Where some of his mid-career output leaned into broader comic rhythms, Flies pulls back toward silence and observation, asking its two leads to carry entire scenes on a look or a held breath. The result feels less like a departure and more like a distillation — a director returning to the register that first got him noticed, and doing it with more control than ever. For anyone new to Eimbcke, this is as good an entry point as any into a filmmaker who has always found the biggest feelings in the smallest rooms.