In Fernando Ayala’s Los tallos amargos (US: The Bitter Stems), Carlos Cores stars as Alfredo Gaspar, a burnt-out journalist searching for meaning in his life. Unfortunately, this search leads him into an illicit scheme with Liudas (Vassili Lambrins), a Hungarian immigrant who’s starting a fake mail-order journalism school, which soon becomes profitable. When Alfredo begins to suspect Liudas has hidden motivations, it leads to distrust, spying, and, ultimately, murder. Ayala and cinematographer Younis steep Alfredo’s existence in noir lighting, often blacking out a room except for one person or object, filling his office with the luminous stripes of Venetian blinds and treating us to an elaborate dream sequence that offers a glimpse into Alfredo’s moral conflict (lost in a forest of human-sized currency) and childhood trauma (an expressionistic funeral procession for his father, killed during the war). The final sequence involving a train and the titular stems is a brilliant work of poetic justice.