Días de otoño (1963)

Luisa is a young woman from the provinces who arrives in Mexico City with a letter of recommendation for Don Albino, the owner of a bakery. The man reluctantly takes her in, but soon realizes she has a great talent for decorating cakes. Luisa has just lost her only family member, an aunt who was the one who recommended her to Don Albino. Because of this loss and her intensely shy nature, Luisa withdraws and avoids contact with the people around her, both at work and in her new home, a tenement building. Everyone can see that Luisa seems to live in a world of dreams and fantasies that, though entirely innocent, keep her detached from the lonely reality she has settled into. Despite her unsociable manner, her coworkers begin to grow fond of her, as does her employer, a widower with two young children. Luisa becomes very attached to Don Albino’s little ones, but consistently rejects his attempts to get closer to her. As the December holidays approach, the women at the bakery try to get her to accept an invitation from Don Albino, along with his advances. When Luisa feels pressured, she confesses that she is about to get married. Her coworkers, who know her, are plainly doubtful. Luisa reacts angrily and tells them, through flashbacks, about the encounters in which she met her boyfriend Carlos, a private chauffeur for an engineer. She ends by telling them that her wedding is to take place in fifteen days. When the wedding day arrives, Luisa manages to keep any of her acquaintances from attending the ceremony. Completely alone, she shows up at the church where she was supposed to meet Carlos, but it soon becomes clear that the groom has not arrived. Worried, Luisa asks the church priest to help her call Carlos at his employers’ home. When they get through, the person who answers is the housekeeper, who explains that she has been his wife for three years. At that moment, Luisa realizes she has fallen victim to a false fantasy. Desolate, and under the astonished gaze of her neighbors, she returns home—an old, crowded tenement—dressed as a bride and visibly distraught. Luisa then decides to move away to avoid further looks of pity, cutting remarks, and whispers in the tenement. Don Albino grants Luisa time off to get married, and when she returns, she leads everyone to believe that she really has married. She goes to a photographer to have her picture taken in her wedding dress and arranges for an image of Carlos to be added by means of a photographic trick. Luisa pretends to her coworkers that she is intensely happy, even telling them she is pregnant. Gradually, Don Albino and her coworkers begin to grow suspicious and ask questions, since they all find it strange that no one has ever seen Carlos. As time passes, she pretends to go through an entire pregnancy, putting special pillows on her stomach to make herself look pregnant. When her supposed term comes to an end, she pretends she had the “baby” in Monterrey, then returns to her everyday life. Her next fanciful lie is to tell everyone that Carlos died in a car accident, making them believe she is mourning him. Convinced that she has had a child, she visits Chapultepec Zoo alone, where Don Albino sees her. The next day, she tells her coworkers she had a wonderful time at the zoo with her son. Perplexed, Don Albino watches her strangely before asking her to accompany him to the customs office to pick up an order. He takes her to Chapultepec, his favorite place, and asks her to tell him what is wrong, while also confessing his feelings for her. Luisa reacts in terror and simply replies that she will tell him later what is going on with her, then walks away. As she goes, her fantasies continue to torment her as she pretends to be walking hand in hand with a child, until she finally realizes that none of what she dreams is real. That night, she puts all the things belonging to the baby she never had into a basket, then takes them and leaves them outside the door of a foundling home. After knocking, she walks away before anyone opens the door. But in an attempt to revive her fantasy life, she comes back to retrieve the basket, only to find it is gone. Smiling as she gazes into nothingness, she walks away with the hope of recovering her life.