Some neighbors share sugar, others share Wi-Fi – these people share lies, pills and emotional emergencies. I Don’t Know Whether to Slit My Wrists or Leave Them Long is what happens when a closeted designer, his “wife”, a depressed ex-footballer and one anxious couple all hit rock bottom on the same floor. It is loud, funny, selfish and unexpectedly tender – like a telenovela that suddenly remembers real life exists.
I Don’t Know Whether to Slit My Wrists or Leave Them Long (2013): Neighbors, Lies and Queer Panic in Mexico City
No sé si cortarme las venas o dejármelas largas (original title)
I Don’t Know Whether to Slit My Wrists or Leave Them Long (2013) is one of those films that sounds horribly dramatic and then surprises you by being, first of all, very loud and very funny. It is a Mexican apartment-block dramedy where suicide threats, anxiety meds and broken legs share the same space with telenovela jokes, queer panic and neighbors who hear absolutely everything through the wall.
Neighbors who are more than “just fine”
The film throws us into the lives of two couples who live door to door in a Mexico City building. Julia and Lucas are “the Catholics” a straight married couple on paper, but in reality she is an aspiring singer and he is a gay fashion designer hiding in plain sight. Across the patio live Nora and Aarón – “the Jews”, a relatively new couple already poisoned by Aarón’s cheating and Nora’s fragile mental health. And somewhere between them moves Lola, a Spanish immigrant with too much nostalgia and zero filter, who has her own catalogue of half healed wounds.
The fragile balance starts to crack when Félix, a former professional footballer, moves into the last empty apartment. He arrives with a ruined leg, a ruined career and one of those silent depressions that everybody sees but nobody really wants to touch. His presence, his celebrity aura and his pain slowly pull out what the others are trying to bury the lies in their relationships, the parts of themselves they keep locked away and the fear that all of this is as good as life will ever get.
Lucas and Julia, a fake marriage with real feelings
Lucas and Julia got married to calm down the rumours. He needed a wife so people would stop whispering that he is gay, she needed stability so she could chase her dream of singing. On paper it looks perfect: best friends living together, sharing bills, helping each other survive their families’ expectations. In reality, you can feel how much their arrangement costs both of them.
Lucas watches the shirtless yoga teachers and the handsome neighbor with the intensity of a teenager who never got to have his first honest crush. He jokes, takes pills “so he does not look so gay” and keeps praying for a love that will finally knock on his door. Julia, meanwhile, is slowly suffocating between failed auditions, stage fright and the sense that life is slipping away one TV jingle at a time. They are incredibly funny together their banter feels like real friendship but the film never forgets that this “marriage” is also a closet with a nice kitchen.
Nora and Aarón – when love and medication are not enough
Nora and Aarón live in a different kind of trap. He cheats, lies and then comes back with flowers, she takes drops and pills to calm her nerves and pretends she is fine. There is a dark little joke at the core of their relationship: she keeps threatening to kill herself or him, and he keeps acting as if this is just another dramatic episode that will pass if he is patient enough.
The film plays their dynamic half as comedy, half as tragedy. We laugh at the melodrama, the gun, the screaming, the obsession with telenovelas but it is also painfully clear that Nora is not just “being hysterical”. She is drowning in insecurity, in the fear that she is no longer attractive and in the silent knowledge that Aarón will probably hurt her again. When Félix enters that world as her football idol, her crush and her potential escape route, things get even messier.
From sitcom to “amores que matan”
Manolo Caro stages the film like a sitcom that accidentally swallowed a serious drama. The camera loves the cramped corridors, the shared patio and those big windows where everybody spies on everybody else. Confessions happen over food, pills are washed down with wine, and there is always a TV on somewhere in the background, feeding the characters cheap stories while their own lives spin out of control.
What works best is the rhythm: quick jokes, layered conversations, people talking over each other. Lucas and Julia’s queer straight-marriage farce plays against Nora and Aarón’s more traditional marital disaster, with Lola commenting on everything from her outsider perspective. Then Félix arrives and suddenly the jokes need to coexist with very real depression, resentment and grief for the lives these characters thought they would have.
The tone does wobble sometimes the film pushes the comedy a little too hard around subjects like suicide and mental illness but it also earns its emotional moments. When the story circles back to the opening gunshot and the possible suicide, it does not feel like a cheap trick; it feels like a reminder that “amores que matan” are not just telenovela titles, they are patterns people fall into when they are too scared to change.
Queer heart in a very straight format
For queer viewers, the most interesting part is how casually the film treats Lucas. He is full of clichés, loves fashion, obsessively watches guys, panics about looking “too gay”, yet the story never punishes him for it. His sexuality is not the problem; the real problem is a world where he still believes that marrying a woman is safer than telling his mother the truth. The film never becomes a capital-Q “Queer Cinema” manifesto, but Lucas is the emotional engine more often than the script wants to admit.
The relationship between Lucas and Félix, full of admiration, jealousy and awkward flirting through the wall, gives the film a quiet queer charge. There is longing, there is projection, there is that feeling of falling in love with someone who sees you only as a funny neighbor with good taste. It is not a classic gay romance, but the vibe is undeniably there.
Why this film is worth your time
I Don’t Know Whether to Slit My Wrists or Leave Them Long is not a subtle film. It is loud, talky, sometimes too theatrical you can feel that it started as a stage play and it loves big gestures. But under all the noise there is a sincere interest in how people perform “being fine” while they are mentally and emotionally falling apart.
If you enjoy messy ensemble stories set in one building, if you like your queer characters complicated and a bit ridiculous, and if you are not afraid of a film that jokes about suicide while still taking pain seriously, this one belongs on your list. It is the kind of movie you watch, laugh at, roll your eyes at and then suddenly realise you have seen at least one neighbor, one couple or one version of yourself somewhere in that chaotic staircase.
