(Teresita Sánchez as Olga and Benito Escobar as Cristian in Mexican film “Moscas” (Flies))

By Michael Roddy

Nine-year-old Cristian (Bastian Escobar) is a force of nature, a bit of a con artist and a whiz on the console of an antiquated, Space Invaders-style arcade game called Cosmic Defenders Pro — which plays such a big role in the Mexican Berlinale film “Moscas” (Flies) it ought to get an acting credit.

Cristian and his father Tulio (Hugo Ramirez) have come to Mexico City to be near the boy’s mother, who is being treated in hospital for cancer. Although it is not his natural habitat, Cristian quickly adapts.

He can run faster than the guard who wants him to stop peeing in the park and he talks a street vendor into giving him a sheet of space-ship stickers in exchange for two mints, because he has no money. With his dad away working, he uses the pretext of delivering slippers to his mom to try to get into the hospital to see her — but no dice, security thwarts him every time.

If based on even that short description, this superb, funny, touching and poignant competition film from Mexico, directed by Fernando Eimbcke, and written by the director and Vanesa Garnica, kindles a memory of Italian director Vittorio de Sica’s 1948 classic “The Bicycle Thieves” then bingo. That neo-realist masterpiece of a father and son coping with poverty in the city is often listed as one of the greatest films of all time.

“The film was really, really inspired by ‘The Bicycle Thieves’ from de Sica,” Eimbcke told a news conference. He also said the filmmakers had had to create their own fake-classic video game because purchasing the rights to use Space Invaders was too expensive.

The film is carried by the energy of Escobar, and a subtle, thoughtful performance by Mexican actress Teresita Sánchez as Olga, a 50s-something woman living alone who rents out a room near the hospital. Tulio cannot afford a room for two but when he sees Olga’s ad for a cheap room for one he takes it, figuring he can smuggle his son in and out.

Olga lives on an upper floor of a decidedly non-luxury building where the lift is mostly out of order and the concrete is crumbling. She rents the room because with rising prices she needs the money.

That said, she is annoyed by just about everything, from the baby in the next door apartment whose squawling comes loud and clear through the paper-thin walls to the couple upstairs having raucous sex. But what especially gets on her nerves is the flies. The opening scene shows her stalking a fly in all the usual ways — trying to shoo it out a window, smash it with a slipper (nb: slippers again) and finally gassing it with so much spray she has a coughing fit.

What she does most of the day is play Sudoku on a computer that was out of date decades ago, and finishes off by watching television and drinking wine. In other words, Olga’s life is about as empty as can be — until Tulio and Cristian move in.

The pretence that Tulio is staying alone in the room doesn’t last long after Olga spots father and son having lunch in the same cheap cafeteria where she eats.

She confronts Tulio and wants him to leave immediately but he pleads that his wife is seriously ill so she relents and lets them say until the weekend — but paying for two. What with having to pay more for the room and buying prescription drugs for his wife, Tulio is forced into taking a temporary job that will mean leaving Cristian alone. He buys his son the cheapest possible mobile phone to keep in touch but that is grabbed in short order by a fleet-footed phone thief.

All that Cristian has left is a few five-peso coins that his father has left him, with an express prohibition against him wasting them on playing the Cosmic Defenders Pro game temptingly installed outside a shop near the apartment. But Cristian is nine, his mom taught him to play the game, and he’s soon working the console with a passion that is almost unnerving.

His fingers move like lightning as he shoots down squadron after squadron of enemy space ships wanting to destroy his mother ship. One night — with his father still away — he plays it so late at night that the shopkeeper comes out and pulls the plug. But by then he has the highest score of anyone in the neighbourhood, with the exception of someone using the initials RMT.

Olga, meanwhile, has warmed to Cristian and agrees to help him in his effort to visit his mother in the hospital. He had a room number from his dad, but she’s been moved from there. Olga goes so far as to get a fake ID that allows her to pass as a relative. Cristian finally gets to deliver the slippers to his mom.

That’s as much of the plot as it is fair to reveal, but it would be remiss not to mention that as Olga’s heart softens towards Cristian, she one night puts on a cha-cha CD and invites him to dance with her. It is a powerful scene, where Cristian is torn between Olga who is now trying to help him and his loyalty to his mother.

This film is beautifully acted, neatly developed and has an ending that will stick with you. People can indeed be nuisances, like flies, but when you take the trouble to get to know them, as Olga does with little Cristian, you find the ties that bind.

Eimbcke said that working with a child actor had been a special challenge, and opportunity.

“We designed very, very precisely the shooting list, everything. And when Bastian arrived to the set, everything was destroyed…because we need to adapt ourselves to Bastian’s energy,” he said.

“And that was the most special thing that you can have on a set. To have a kid on a set was a learning process to all of us…So this little man, he taught us a lot.”

Asked if he wants now to become an actor, Escobar said: “I like acting. I like everything about it.”