This film takes a heightened, enervated approach to one of the interlocking narrative threads in the filmmakers’ wider adaptation of Ronald Tavel’s 1971 play The Last Days of British Honduras, which is transposed from the jungles of Belize to the urban geography of wintertime Chicago.
In this storyline, an interloper, a gringo in the original play, plunges into a chamber drama involving ‘locals’ that touches on notions of destiny and rebirth, Meso – American mythology and the supernatural, race and the legacy of colonialism. By shifting the locale to Chicago, Sullivan and Sharmini deploy Tavel’s play as a vehicle for exploring contemporary America.