The naked body of a beautiful teenage girl is found in a field near the small Mexican village of Loma Grande. Local boy Ramon Castanos admired the fair Adela only from afar; and yet such is his distress at her death that the townsfolk take him to be her bereaved lover, and prevail upon him to avenge her murder. With deceptive simplicity Guillermo Arriaga depicts how a trail of gunpowder-like gossip can erupt into unstoppable violence. 'Steeped in [Amores Perros's] sense of lurid desperation and fetid tragedy, A Sweet Scent of Death beats a muscular path to a crushing denouement.' The Face