Cannes 2012: Post Tenebras Lux, review Post Tenebras Lux, by the Mexican director Carlos Reygadas (Silent Light), is the second "strange" film - or third, if you count The Paperboy - to be screened in competition at Cannes over as many days. But compared to Leos Carax's majestic Holy Motors it feels frustratingly aimless, and its proximity to that film in the screening programme has done it no favours. The title is a Latin phrase meaning "after darkness, light," and Reygadas's reverential images of nature certainly have an awestruck crepuscular glow about them. A distorted lens used in outdoor scenes makes the landscapes ripple like the surface of a mountain lake. And yet after a terrific opening sequence, in which an adorable child (Reygadas's daughter Rut) scampers around a field in twilight, the sense of wonder quickly fades. Dreary family drama goes on to dominate what could almost be described as the plot, and mid-film sorties into a cheerless sex club and a rugby match at an English secondary school are as bamboozling in isolation as they are in context.