Attempting suicide once is a cry for help. Trying to take your own life 14 times, over the course of 63 years is … something else. A something else that Mexican Oscar winner Nora’s Will dips its toe in, but never deeply explores. But then, that may be because it has other things on its mind -- like the callous rigidity of Orthodox Judaism, or the secrets that the dead may take (or try to take) to their graves.

Though her name’s in the title, and her character’s clearly the crux of the film, we don’t get much more than a few glimpses of Nora, figuratively and literally. As the movie opens, from distorted angles we see her wake up, set the dining table, make coffee, and spy on her ex-husband, Jose, who happens to live in the building next door. When a delivery man raps on Jose’s door with a tower of frozen meat boxes for Nora, Jose heads to her apartment to investigate (which he still has the key to) and finds her dead from an overdose of pills. He also finds a refrigerator stacked with food containers labeled with post-it note tips ("Don’t use oregano," etc.) and a recipe book with Passover dinner instructions and letters addressed to friends and family.

It’s a setup. At least that’s what Jose curmudgeonly concludes. Nora must have known that due to Jewish laws and their son being out of town, it wouldn’t be possible to bury her until the Sunday after Passover. Which leaves Jose with a decomposing body, the young Jew Moises assigned to pray over Nora, and his evident bitterness -- evident when he gruffly corrects everyone who still refers to Nora as his wife, rather than ex (though they were together 30 years). He responds to a eulogy questionnaire that suggests he list Nora’s acts of charity with: “I can’t think of any.” Jose’s suspicions ring even truer later when Nora’s friends and relatives turn up to cook Passover dinner, invited earlier as part of her alleged post-suicide plan.

Plan for what, though? To make her former husband mull things over via soft-lit flashbacks to moments of budding marriage bliss (where he romantically asks her not to kill herself and she agrees)? Or later car-ride rows where he berates he for wanting to leave her son, and she insists he doesn’t understand her illness? It’s never quite clear. But while he babysits Nora’s body, Jose stumbles on a photo that makes him doubt everything and he becomes determined to find out the truth about their relationship -- an obsession undoubtedly fueled just as much by outrage as lingering love.

Add to this plot a clash of religious traditions between Jose, the Christian housekeeper, and the black-hatted orthodox Jews tending to Nora’s funereal, a conflict brought to a boil by Jose’s taunting the rabbi with a very un-kosher sausage pizza and the conservative cemetery board’s condemnation of suicide. Then layer onto that the unfinished business of death. Nora leaves letters for loved ones whose contents we never know. And when Jose tries to pry answers about the mysterious photo from Nora’s cousin Leah, she frustratingly replies she won’t reveal secrets to him now, that Nora didn’t want to reveal when she was alive.

Top it all off with a hint of eccentric humor including a subtly played dildo scene and the aforementioned sausage pizza and it makes for a very complex, emotionally laden movie. One that might make you feel like you need to be Mexican, Jewish, or both to best appreciate it -- or watch it more than once. Or make you wish its filmmakers had dived deeper into one topic rather than skim the surface of all of them. Then again, the aftermath of a suicide, or any death, is just as incomplete, contemplative, and emotionally murky. Perhaps, for Nora’s Will, that’s exactly the punch line.

Grade: B