I Don’t Know Whether to Slit My Wrists or Leave Them Long (2013) Plot Summary Explained

The opening gunshots come from two separate apartments inside the same Mexico City building. Nora fires at her husband Aarón after discovering yet another of his affairs, while Félix appears to be making a suicide attempt in his apartment following the collapse of his football career and his breakup. The film then rewinds eight months to show how both situations escalated to that single night.

Foreshadowing: The film ends by circling back to this opening moment, confirming that the violence is the direct result of months of accumulated betrayal and emotional collapse.

• gunshots
• nora
• aaron
• felix
• opening scene
• mexico city apartment

Félix attempts suicide after his promising professional football career is cut short by a severe leg injury, and his girlfriend abandons him instead of standing by him through the recovery. Losing both the athletic identity that defined him and his primary relationship leaves him emotionally devastated, and the attempt takes place during the same chaotic night that opens the film.

Foreshadowing: Early scenes show Félix drinking alone and isolating himself, hinting that his despair has been building long before the climactic night.

• felix
• suicide attempt
• football injury
• depression
• girlfriend

Julia and Lucas are not actually a couple, they are close friends who maintain the appearance of a married couple so that Lucas can hide his homosexuality from his conservative family. The arrangement allows Lucas to live openly inside the apartment building while still meeting his family's expectations about his personal life.

Foreshadowing: Small moments of awkward physical distance between Julia and Lucas hint early on that their relationship is performative rather than romantic.

• julia
• lucas
• fake marriage
• homosexuality
• closet
• conservative family

Nora holds Aarón at gunpoint after discovering that he is once again cheating on her, this time with their neighbor Julia. Eight months of accumulated infidelity, combined with the emotional exhaustion of pretending their marriage could survive, push her past confrontation and into a moment of desperate, dangerous rage.

Foreshadowing: Earlier scenes show Nora increasingly suspicious of Aarón's late nights and inconsistent stories, foreshadowing the moment she finally acts on her suspicions.

• nora
• aaron
• gunpoint
• infidelity
• confrontation
• marriage

Before Félix moves in, the neighbors maintain polite facades that mask deep tensions like Aarón's affairs, Nora's mistrust, and Lucas's hidden sexuality. Félix arrives as an outsider who is not bound by the building's unspoken rules, and his presence forces the group to interact more honestly, which gradually exposes their secrets and pulls the characters into new romantic entanglements.

Foreshadowing: Félix's first conversations with each neighbor already reveal how easily he reads past their rehearsed answers.

• felix
• new neighbor
• catalyst
• dynamics
• secrets
• apartment building

Félix suffered a severe leg injury that forced him into early retirement from professional football. The injury not only ended the career that defined him but also triggered a chain reaction, his girlfriend left him rather than stay through his recovery, leaving him isolated, depressed, and directionless at the start of the film.

Foreshadowing: Félix is shown limping and favoring his injured leg during everyday activities in the building, a constant reminder of what he has lost.

• felix
• football
• leg injury
• retirement
• girlfriend

Lucas is already struggling with hiding his true sexuality behind his fake marriage to Julia, and Félix represents an openly masculine, emotionally available man who sees Lucas as he really is. The attraction becomes complicated because Lucas fears exposing his homosexuality and destabilizing the arrangement he has built with Julia and his family.

Foreshadowing: Lucas is the only neighbor who immediately drops his rehearsed persona around Félix, signaling a deeper personal connection.

• lucas
• felix
• attraction
• homosexuality
• hidden feelings

Julia and Aarón are both unhappy in their respective relationships, Aarón because of his loveless and mistrust-filled marriage to Nora, and Julia because her life with Lucas is a platonic facade. Their mutual dissatisfaction draws them together, and the affair begins as they seek the emotional and physical connection they are not getting at home.

Foreshadowing: Julia and Aarón are repeatedly shown bonding over shared complaints about their partners long before the affair is confirmed.

• julia
• aaron
• affair
• infidelity
• relationship
• betrayal

As a newcomer with no ties to the building's social contract, Félix approaches the neighbors without the polite blinders they use with each other. His directness and outsider perspective allow him to piece together the inconsistencies in their stories, Aarón's excuses, Julia and Lucas's fake marriage, and the underlying resentments, before the other characters realize he has seen through them.

Foreshadowing: Félix is shown asking unusually blunt questions that catch the others off guard, establishing him as someone who notices what others deliberately ignore.

• felix
• secrets
• discovery
• lies
• outsiders
• truth

The film opens with the violent climax and then rewinds eight months to trace each thread that converges on that night. Aarón's repeated infidelities push Nora to the breaking point, Félix's depression deepens in isolation, and the web of affairs and hidden truths becomes impossible to contain, all of which build toward the dual crises of Nora confronting Aarón and Félix's suicide attempt.

Foreshadowing: Throughout the flashback, minor confrontations steadily escalate in frequency and intensity, signaling that the opening violence is inevitable.

• flashback
• eight months
• climax
• cause and effect
• escalation

The non-linear structure places the most dramatic moment, the two gunshots, at the very beginning to hook the viewer and establish the stakes immediately. By rewinding eight months, the film then shows how ordinary tensions like infidelity, closeted sexuality, and career loss gradually escalated into violence, making the cause-and-effect chain between the neighbors' choices and the climactic night impossible to miss.

Foreshadowing: The opening scene is replayed at the end of the film, confirming that the entire flashback was building toward that exact moment.

• non-linear structure
• flashback
• narrative
• eight months
• in medias res

After the climactic gunshots, the characters are left to reckon with the consequences of their actions. The resolution does not undo the violence; instead, it shows how the neighbors' lives have been permanently altered by the exposure of their lies, betrayals, and suppressed desires, with no easy way back to the facades they once maintained.

Foreshadowing: Throughout the film, every character insists their secrets are temporary, foreshadowing that the final exposure will leave none of those arrangements intact.

• aftermath
• confrontation
• consequences
• resolution
• ending