The movie is told in a non-linear time jumbo. Sylvia (Charlize Theron) runs a high class restaurant with friend Laura (Robin Tunney). She is emotionally damaged and has non-committal sex with strangers. Her boyfriend John (John Corbett) is furious. She gets a ride from Carlos. Carlos has been looking for her but he doesn't speak English. He has brought her abandoned daughter Maria. In a desert New Mexico town, Gina (Kim Basinger) is having an affair with Nick Martinez (Joaquim de Almeida). Her daughter Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence) finds out and their love-nest trailer explodes in flames killing both. Mariana and Nick's son Carlos (José María Yazpik) begin a relationship.The time jumbo doesn't help the lack of tension. Sylvia's nihilist existence has some intrigue but the jumping around highlights the search for connections between the different periods more than advance the character study. There is a mystery twist but that requires Theron and Lawrence to be the same. It's not a failure but it is a stretch. I doubt she got plastic surgery. The story may be more compelling told in a straight forward timeline.

In cinema there are two genres that emphasize the morbid: pornography and horror films. Body parts are the chief subject matter and content of both, though it is only in recent decades that horror has moved from psychological to its current gross-out and shock status.Writer turned director Guillermo Arriaga takes the morbid route for a dramatic film "The Burning Plain", and merely displays a complete lack of feeling for cinema. Each scene is presented in the dull "one thing after another" representation of life that master directors like Hitchcock abhorred. Of course a great stylist like Ozu or Angelopoulos can get away with this approach, but Arriaga makes the experience dull indeed with his lack of technique.Lack of suspense is the other damning fault of the film. Hitchcock often stressed the need to impart enough information as a storyteller in order that the viewer could share in the anticipation and enjoyment of key revelations to come, whereas novice Arriaga falls into the rookie trap of surprise. This is akin to bad horror films, where even if there are suspenseful scenes of dread and fear, the payoff or climax of a sequence is relegated to gimmick - the equivalent of sneaking up and shouting "boo" at the viewer like clockwork every few reels. Modern audiences equate that scare tactic to the horror film being a good one. Here, we finally, tortuously, get the contrived threads of the director's inside-out plot tied up ever so neatly -meant as a thrill for the mind, but a massive groaner for me. Better leave things enigmatic, but this is a man who has sold his soul to the Chaos Theory school of bad filmmaking.Parting shot: another Adult Cinema gimmick is talking the actresses into doing this or that sex act (anal, interracial and gang-bang currently being the marketable commodities), to ensure the box office success of the product. For Arriaga, we have the modern phony-baloney equivalent of preying on actresses who have fallen for that whole indie myth of "giving one's all just for art". So the superstar sex symbol icons like Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron, with young Jennifer Lawrence warming up in the bullpen to surpass them in future career, are cajoled into "naughty" bits they would balk at in a big-budget studio assignment, probably feeling insulted. But for this crappy project - give it your all, scars being the fetish of the day.

Guillermo Arriaga's The Burning Plain. Desolate. Heartbreaking. Gorgeously shot. Arriaga is the writer of 21 Grams, Babel and Amorros Perros. Here he gets the chance to direct his own project, and his creative vision sparks in a tale of several women separated by time and distance, but connected by romantic tragedy. The story shows in sweeping, searing strokes how the decisions of one generation and the resulting consequences can bleed out into the next generation, and the next, forging a heart wrenching chain of events that are often difficult to undo, or reconcile with. Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron are remarkable in the two central roles. Jennifer Lawrence displays an igniting spark of the fiery talent we see today. Underrated genre favourite Joaquim De Almeida gets a chance to play against his villain type as a sympathetic, affectionate man, and Brett Cullen is quietly devastating in a supporting role. This film wrestles with ideas of running from your past, fate and the forces of nature bringing people's paths together despite the ensuing tragedy. It's an intriguing, haunting, low key yet inwardly tumultuous piece.

The Burning Plain, a romantic mystery about a woman on the edge who takes an emotional journey back to the defining moment of her life. Written and directed by Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel). It is a heart breaking, touching movie. It follows the formula of having a main story with various sub-stories that in the end their paths are crossed. The rhythm is a little slow, it continuously changes from story to story making it hard to follow and a little boring at some moments. The cast is good. Charliza Theron, Kim Basinger John Corbett, Robin Tunney, Jose Maria Yazpik, everyone delivering very convincing performances although some of them are a little overacted as well. In conclusion, If you've seen Babel or 21 Grams or Amores Perros, all of them written by Ariaga, then you know what to expect with The Burning Plain