Through the opening credits and amidst the screams of a carnival midway, two young friends, easily mistaken for lovers, laugh their way through rides and games until their curiosity leads them inside a tent where a beautiful fortune teller begins to predict their future and then abruptly shouts for them to leave, which they do: we never see that couple again. This whole set-up gives a taste of the intricate plotting to come in Daniel Tinayre’s El rufián (US: The Ruffian), in which characters will appear and disappear, time will jump forward and backward, and an underlying disorientation will keep tension ratcheted up for a full two-hour runtime. The fortune teller, Isabel (Egle Martin), an amnesiac who was “adopted” and exploited by the manager ten years earlier, has been seeing crystal ball images of a man coming to kill her. A few days later, Héctor (Carlos Estrada) shows up: Isabel doesn’t know Héctor, but he knows her all too well and takes her (and the viewer) on a long flashback that exposes her history of obscene wealth, adultery (her husband is the only man in the film not interested in having sex with her), and murder. The film is visually sumptuous, each set (the carnival tent, the doctor’s estate, the abandoned Gothic mansion where Isabel lives alone) more stunning than the last. The camera peers from ceilings, from inside fireplaces, out windows, and spinning around a seance table. The midway roars constantly and the brassy score occasionally rises to levels of insanity. Tinayre blends drama, depth, and wild storytelling into a dazzling visual experience that will satisfy even the most discerning noir fans.