Ripstein describes his soulful tribute to Mexican chanteuse Lucha Reyes as an "imaginary portrait of a sentimental life" that takes open license in enriching and expanding Reyes tragic life story into a heady evocation of Mexico City in the Thirties and Forties, rich in baroque detail and texture. Reyes' forcefully destructive tendencies and descent into alcoholism are treated with rare tenderness by Garcíadiego's sensitive script which gives equal space to her ballads of torturous love. Both Reyes's hard-scrabble struggle for her art and for dignity – her desperate mothering of a beggar orphan can be taken as an emblem of modern Mexico's own turbulent coming of age.