‘Flies’ Review: A 9-Year-Old Isn’t the Only One Coming of Age in This Droll Mexico City Delight

That heartbreaking little-kid-in-a-big-world movie is a touchstone classic of arthouse cinema, from misfit adolescent Antoine Doinel wandering Paris in François Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” to the child’s-eye-view adopted by Satyajit Ray for the rural-centric “Pather Panchali.” For almost a century, directors have found novel ways to imbue the subgenre with wit and hard truths.

Enter Fernando Eimbcke‘s winsomely dry, wistful melan-comedy, “Flies” (or “Moscas” as titled in Spanish), into an adjacent pantheon — a minor-key, underplayed yet nonetheless poignant portrait of a nine-year-old boy (Bastian Escobar) who disrupts the rhythms of life for an older, single woman (Teresita Sánchez) he’s temporarily housed with.

Eimbcke’s fifth feature, shot in black-and-white by Maria Secco, takes you through Mexico City’s working-class neighborhoods, its tree-lined avenues, its low-rise tenements and high-rise hospitals, with a romantic’s eye, and even adoring care. “Flies” plays out largely through Cristian’s (Escobar, a promising young lead) knee-level view of life, when not situating us in the unmarried, lonely days and ways of Olga (Sánchez), who begins the movie as an almost stereotypically ornery curmudgeon until she winds up opening her heart to imaginative Cristian and his loving father (Hugo Ramírez).

They’ve come from out of town to put their sick mother and wife in hospital to receive cancer treatment, which Cristian hopes will heal her, even as prospects to the adults look grimmer by the day. Meanwhile, the housebound, unyielding Olga — who early on seems both repulsed and weirdly curious about the vigorous orgasm sounds happening upstairs from her tiny flat, meaning she’s not totally rejecting of a life outside her own — has been forced to rent her room out due to economic straits. And perhaps a chronic loneliness.

Cristian’s father settles in, but must basically smuggle Cristian in during the process, as Olga is not interested in a tenant with family-shaped baggage. Or seemingly any baggage at all. Once she catches on to their scheme, Olga gives the father and son mere days to vacate. Instead, she finds herself alone with the child.

Escobar and Sánchez spark a sweet rapport despite some bumps in their dynamic, even as the film‘s wilfulness toward backstory-level explanation of Olga’s bristling lot in life keeps “Flies” somewhat at an emotional remove from the audience. Later in the film, as Cristian’s father disappears for long stretches of time seeking temporary work, Cristian pulls out a child-sized onesie from the closet in Olga’s guest room; her face collapses, her reaction indicating some palpable trauma the filmmaker doesn’t deign to overexplain. Eimbcke and co-screenwriter Vanesa Garnica don’t feel compelled to say much more to signal that Olga is suffering from a long-held pain. But everyone here, somehow, has to grow up, in one case too soon and in the other quite late.

The filmmaker’s preference for black-and-white lensing — however elegaic and elegant, turning this Mexico City into a faded postcard or time capsule containing centuries of secrets — also keeps the emotional impact at arm’s length. You might yearn for the bursting color and teeming life the city can offer, but Eimbcke seems more keen on painting his home city in bygone terms, the way you might remember it from when you first became a cognizant youngster.

Cristian’s fixation on winning a vintage two-bit arcade game on the sidewalk not far from Olga’s home is a romantic touch that turns, briefly, surreal as Cristian mentally threads his experience with the game into his experience with his now certainly dying mother. Even as Cristian can’t fully grasp what’s happening to her in that hospital rooms, with all those tubes and people in smocks coming and going.

As end-of-innocence tales of youth go, “Flies” is refreshingly unsentimental and contained merely to this one window of time, where Cristian and Olga spark a connection that probably, when the reels end, will alter both their lives. Escobar proves a playful but eventually wiser-than-his-years young hero, while Sánchez’s internally pointed take on a taciturn woman is an often-silent marvel of performance. While some might feel shortchanged on the explicit expositions and blunt emotions rarely on offer, use your head: Eimbcke has given you the tools to see where both are coming from, and maybe, where they’re headed.

Grade: B

“Flies” premiered at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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