Carlos Reygados is not about to make it easy for you. His debut film, "Japon" (review here), is something of a challenge even to viewers (such as this humble writer) who are open to something different and willing to accept a slower, even glacial, storytelling pace. For his second feature, "Battle in Heaven", he's not making it any easier.

The film opens with a naked, middle aged man named Marcos (Marcos Hernandez) receving a blowjob from a naked young woman named Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz). This may or may not strike you as extreme. The scene, unlike the way it might be staged in a more mainstream film, is brightly lit and most obviously NOT simulated. The fact that Ana is extremely younger than Marcos adds to the heebie-jeebie factor.

But Reygados, as I said, is not taking the easy, typical way out of anything, even in the way he develops his plot. This film is more plot driven than "Japon", though it goes about telling its story in an untypical way. Marcos is a chauffer working for a powerful general who entrusts him to drive around his daughter, Ana. Marcos isn't quite able to make ends meet, or at least provide the level of comfort his family needs. So he and his wife kidnapped a baby and held it for ransom. Unfortunately, the baby has died while in their custody.

A director like, say, Tony Scott would have played this out as the suspenseful setup to a genre film (and arguably did with the first act of his film "Man on Fire") but Reygados isn't really interested in suspense. None of this action is portrayed in the film -- instead, we get all this information in one line of dialogue. What interests Reygados is morality, and the film is more about how Marcos' guilt defines his action over the next few days.

Ana has a little secret of her own -- unknown to her rich, powerful father Ana has been working at a brothel for quite a while. One day, Marcos crosses the line from chauffer to client and during their pillow talk, Marcos confesses his sins to Ana.

Marcos is a fascinating figure. The actor playing him, Marcos Hernandez, has a passive quality onscreen that, over time, builds up a considerable level of sympathy for him. While most films might play this kind of character as something of a mustache-twirling sleazeball (he is, after all, a child abductor, an adulterer and a whoremonger), "Battle In Heaven" really only sets up Marcos' sins as a means to his quest for redemption.

In fact, the film's third act (again, in contrast to "Japon", "Battle in Heaven" has a three act structure) is somewhat reminiscent of the work of the polish master filmmaker Krystof Kieslowski. The intensity of faith, especially in the way it drives Marcos to some decidedly extreme measures, hangs heavily over the proceedings, and one could argue that the film ends with a kind of divine intervention and forgiveness.

I'm not really one to throw the word auteur around easily, but Carlos Reygados has shown, with his first two films, to be a director worthy of the title. He is well on his way to creating a body of work that is unique in cinema, and he has certain visual obsessions that have cropped up in both of his films (both feature sweeping helicopter shots taken from remote settings and shots of shrinking erections, among other things), and his pattern of working with non-actors to create screen personalities that (according to the director) somewhat echo the real lives of the performers is really paying off. You can spot a Carlos Reygados movie right away -- it's the film about people, places, and situations that no one else seems willing (or able) to put on film.