El diablo fuma

Do you remember a time when life swung between games and sudden, visceral danger? A time when the world felt enchanted and then, without warning, full of dragons? El diablo fuma invites us back into that child’s realm, where the past drifts like a half-remembered dream, the future is non-existent and all you have is the present. It is between these three states of consciousness that we move, through the eyes of five siblings: Vanessa, Victor, Marisol, Elsa, and Tomás. The eldest is twelve; the youngest is six.

The five children live with their parents, Emiliano and Judith, and their grandmother, Romana, in a house in Mexico City. In the opening sequence, we see each character introduced through vignettes showing their everyday lives: the parents are at work – the father is a mechanic, the mother a nurse – while the children are occupied in different activities. Some of these activities are literal and easy to place: repairing bikes, teaching their stuffed animals about photosynthesis, assembling a collage of pictures for a family tree. Others are far more enigmatic: hands slipping through loose bricks in the wall, a woman sitting in a room wearing a panda hat and another woman in her nurse uniform, looking lost and distressed.

The framing of these early moments is crucial. The camera uses medium to wide shots, showing life inside the house and the world beyond its walls. This is more than a stylistic choice, it is a visual assertion of possibility, perspective, and consequence in a world of responsible adults. Very early in the story, when both parents leave, that access to the outside world, and to the wide-lens clarity that renders it legible, vanishes. The responsible adults, the ones who could move safely between the domestic and the external, the only ones who held a coherent sense of time – especially of the future and its consequences – are suddenly gone.

Once they leave, the film shifts. The rest of the story unfolds in the house and is captured through closer lens and lower angles. Mimicking the perceptual logic of a child: a focus on one thing at a time, on whatever is directly in front of you. Perspective contracts. The future (with its consequences) disappears. What remains is a mosaic of interior spaces: a metal gate, a living room with a TV, a garden with a well and hens, a girls’ bedroom, a boys’ bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, the parent’s room, the grandmother’s room, a terrace, a courtyard with Willy the dog on his leash, stairways and hallways.

This narrowing of space breeds an imminent sense of danger. With the parents gone, the children assume the role of guardians, defending the house from every possible point of access: the neighbour and his car on the street, reached through the locked gate and courtyard; the roof terrace, where another neighbour appears suddenly from above; the garden; the living room; the newspaper-covered windows; the doors barricaded with chairs and furniture. The home becomes a fortress: a child-built castle with its own moat and improvised walls. Inside its walls, tension rises and collapses in an instant: the bell rings, a shadow moves, the phone rings, a sound echoes. Is it a real threat or a child’s imagination? We never know for sure. Whenever the outside world brushes against the house though, the consequences are unmistakably real, and rarely good.

The imbalance of responsibility inside the house becomes increasingly apparent. The two oldest, Vanessa and Victor, understand what has happened when their mother leaves, followed shortly by their father. Their grandmother, Romana, also knows, though her grip on reality wavers; her mental state places her uncannily close to the children’s own shifting perception. Among the three of them are divided the tasks of maintaining the household: Vanessa manages meals and daily care; Victor takes charge of vigilance; Romana buys food and guards the keys. Yet none of them are equipped to sustain the home on their own, and together they form an improvised system that only holds as long as no fully adult crisis enters their orbit.

In this state of limbo, each family member’s life carries on. Elsa and Tomás remain the most carefree, the natural comedians of the household. Marisol, the middle child, moves through the rooms like a faint presence. Vanessa edges into adolescence; Tomás whispers prayers to the devil; Romana mutters complaints to insects no one else can see. Together, they cannot uphold a single coherent account of what has happened, what is happening, or what might happen next. Instead, what they manage is a temporary equilibrium: they eat, the house is cleaned, groceries are bought, routines are kept. When confronted by grown-up demands of explanations however, their capacity collapses. They can imitate stability, but they cannot sustain it.

Interwoven with the main story are cuts to home videos, glimpses of the family captured on a camcorder sometime in the past. These fragments, shaky and affectionate, show a household that once felt whole: the mother smiling, the children singing “Eres” by Massiel, the rooms bright. At times the recordings transition into the present without the viewer realising, as if the present is already being recorded as the past, waiting to be rewatched.

El diablo fuma is nearly flawless in the way it weaves these states of being, play and fear, joy and grief, imagination and danger, into a single tapestry. Its final moments are extraordinary: devastating, inevitable, and easily one of the most memorable endings I have seen in 2025.