NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD

The heroine of "Tótem," a new film from the Mexican director Lila Avilés, is a girl by the name of Solecito (Naíma Sentíes), or Sol for short. We are never told her age: seven or eight, perhaps, though she's one of those naturally grave children who seem a little older and wiser than they ought-or would choose to be.

- ANTHONY LANE

"Totem" and "I.S.S."

In Sol's case, the wisdom is hard-won. She has moments of foolery and giggling, but much of the time she keeps quiet, or abstracts herself from the proceedings. The final third of the movie depicts a birthday party for her father, Tonatiuh, or Tona (Mateo García Elizondo), and where do we find Sol, as the revels get under way? Roosting on high, at rooftop level, gazing down at the fun. Somebody sends a camera up on a drone, for a laugh, to capture Sol on her perch. "Stop filming me!" she exclaims. "Leave me alone!"

The tenor of "Tótem," in which the solemn is wreathed with the festive, is established in an early scene. Sol is being driven to the party by her mother, Lucía (Iazua Larios), and they play a game in the car: hold your breath and make a wish. Sol, without prompting, admits, "I wished for Daddy not to die." Tona has cancer, and, when we meet him, we believe as much; he is little more than a skeleton with a smile, and this birthday will almost certainly be his last. Hence the family that assembles around him, later swelled by friends. Tona's siblings include Alejandra (Marisol Gasé), who is first seen dyeing her hair, and Nuri (Montserrat Marañón), who is baking a cake and icing it to resemble van Gogh's "Starry Night"-an excuse, mainly, to stay in the kitchen and get drunk. Also present is Nuri's daughter, Esther (Saori Gurza), who is younger than Sol and more clinging; she sits atop the fridge, holding a cat, and hangs on to her mother's legs when Nuri tries to leave the room. Tona's elderly father, Roberto (Alberto Amador), is there, too, with a face of thunder, obsessively clipping a bonsai tree. Has he always, we wonder, been so impossible to please?