Starring Jorge Machado and Natan Machado Palombini. In Spanish and Italian with English subtitles. Unrated. Plays Friday to Monday, February 25 to 28, and Wednesday and Thursday, March 2 and 3, at the Vancity Theatre

Alamar is a first feature for Mexican documentary director-cinematographer Pedro González-Rubio, who took just a few fictional liberties with the lives of four people who allowed him to film an important point in their lives. The key figure is Jorge (Jorge Machado), a Maya recently separated from his Italian wife (Roberta Palombini) and—as seen in a home-movie preamble—in Rome to collect their handsome little son, Natan, for an extended Mexican summer.

That already sounds good, but what an amazing part of Mexico! The Caribbean atoll Banco Chinchorro is home to the largest coral reef in the region and some of the clearest pale-blue waters you’ve ever seen. In a house on stilts, Jorge’s father (and I suspect Nestór Marí­n is not actually related to Jorge) waits with a small boat, hammocks, and pots of strong coffee and fish stew.

The three of them fish with bare nylon lines, or they snorkel on the reef, spearing giant lobsters to eat or sell to commercial outfits. They occasionally meet other fishermen, and the only female on the scene is a snow-white African egret, dubbed Blanquita by the boy. That’s what passes for a subplot in a tale that clocks in at less than an hour and a quarter. What matters here is the ebb and flow of tides, the yellow of a freshly painted wall, and the glow of familial affection.

The longhaired, lithe-limbed Jorge may sound like a representation of primitive man, but this is one Maya who listens to jazz, knows the Latin names of local animal species, and instructs his son with the tender regard we all wish we’d had more of. It’s an idealized world, without alcohol, threat of violence (not counting that croc in the “back yard”), or even bad weather. But Alamar is not about a utopian lifestyle that’s supposed to last forever; it’s about an easy kind of love that really can.