A cannily adjudged mixture of the austere and the melodramatic, The Reasons of the Heart is a loose modern-day adaptation of Madame Bovary in black-and-white, set almost entirely in a nondescript Mexico City apartment building. The film’s opening scene finds Emilia already in the throes of illicit lust: bored by her husband and her daughter, she lives only for the desultory attention of her lover upstairs. The camera paces the building’s hallways and lurks in its drab lobby, its gaze somehow both anxious and dispassionate as the adulteress’ life unravels. Ripstein has spoken of Garcíadiego’s ability in her screenplay to reveal the affirmative side of a literary character he’s always disliked—Emilia’s total commitment to her passion—and this turbulent ambivalence fuels the movie.