Loading a production with characters, going back in time whenever you get the occasion and changing settings as much as you can is not the key to success. Somebody tell Guillermo Arriaga that he failed this time with “The Burning Plain.”

Viewers don’t have time to get emotionally involved, because trying to follow the movie’s idea requires too much concentration, leaving no room for them to connect with the characters or their afflictions.

The plot moves too fast between New Mexico and Oregon, between past and present and the huge number of characters.

In a few words, two parallel stories develop at the same time: on the one hand, the movie portrays the disappointing sex life of Sylvia (Charlize Theron), the manager of a classy restaurant who hides herself from her own past and, on the other hand, the film focuses on a story that took place more than a decade earlier in the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico. The second narrative involves the tragedy of two families striving to cope with the deaths of Nick, a married Mexican-American man (Joaquim De Almeida) and Gina, a married woman, with four children, impersonated by Kim Basinger. The two had been lovers and died while they were in a trailer that exploded from a gas leak.

Nick and Gina’s kids are the most affected by their parents’ horrific deaths and, as they try to get over the incident, Santiago (J.D. Pardo) and Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence) become intimate.

The link between the two stories becomes obvious toward the end of the movie, when the puzzle finally gets its last piece. However, everything is so intricate, that you’ll need a second to recap all the scenes over and over again in order to put two and two together.