Lucrecia Martel specializes in the cinema of disorientation. Though she has amassed a critically-acclaimed body of work, the Argentinian director’s first film, La Ciénaga (2001), remains quite possibly her best, a dizzying debut that breaks all kinds of cinematic rules, yet still succeeds by being so utterly unique.
Translated as “The Swamp,” “La Ciénaga” may be the name of Martel’s fictionalized town in the movie, but it also applies not only to the political and economic morass that was about to ensnare Argentina in a financial crisis at the start of the new century and the moral fog that falls over the characters that populate her movie. Take the opening sequence. A storm is brewing on the horizon, rising up over the Andes. Meanwhile, a group of older people, laid low by too much alcohol, loaf around a murky swimming pool. They move about in a haze, unmoved even when one of their number trips while carrying some glasses, cutting herself badly. No one reacts until the children in the house spring into action and take the woman to the hospital.
Martel doesn’t spoon-feed us and it takes time to realize not only who the movie is about, but how everyone is related. There are simply too many characters. Multiple story lines heap upon other stories as Martel juggles issues from class distinction to interfamilial strife to budding and waning sexuality. La Ciénaga is a film that butts up against traditional structure, yet that’s exactly the point. How else make a case against the dissolute wealthy, class conflict and the patriarchy than make art that is challenging and provocative?
The majority of La Ciénaga takes places at La Mandrágora, the rotting country home of Mecha (Graciela Borges) and Gregorio (Martín Adjemián), a pair of drunks who do little more than loaf around until Mecha’s accident by the pool. Their daughters spend much of their time lying about in bed or by the pool while the boys, covered in scratches and (in some cases) worse injuries, go off hunting in the mountains. After Mecha’s accident, her friend or cousin (it is never made clear), Tali (Mercedes Morán), brings her own children to visit from the city against the desires of her husband, a working man who disapproves of the dissipated bunch out in the country. Tali and Mecha want to take a trip to Bolivia, yet we know it will never happen. Tali’s husband will not permit her to go, while Gregorio is so inept that Mecha is needed at the La Mandrágora lest everything fall apart. Yes, Martel is railing against Argentina’s patriarchal system here, but La Ciénaga takes on so much more. The house is run by a cadre of servants, many of them Indians. Mecha’s family treats them as intimates in many cases, but also demeans them, unaware just how dependent they are on their services.
However, it is the undercurrent of risk that wriggles at the heart of La Ciénaga. With the adults more or less absent, the children dive into fetid pools of water, take to the mountains with guns larger than their own bodies, get into fights with locals and more. Martel sets up scene after scene where an injury or even a death seems likely, only to cut away to a later scene where everyone is fine. La Ciénaga exists in the ellipses, yet it’s only a matter of time before tragedy strikes.
Another striking aspect of La Ciénaga is Martel’s use of sound. In the first scene alone we hear ice striking the inside of glasses, chairs dragging across the rough patio, guns and thunder booming. These are sounds of everyday life, yet in Martel’s hands there is something foreboding about them, harbingers of something horrible to come. In fact, most of La Ciénaga drips with dread, but thrums with a life force as the younger characters recognize their sexuality. Yes, sex and death may be reductionist, but many a great film has traded on those two milestones.
More than anything, La Ciénaga is about inertia, its characters unable to recognize the quagmire in which they are living. It’s a political allegory, to be sure, and Martel even includes a parallel story about the supposed appearance of the Virgin Mary in a place nearby. When one of the characters goes to see the Virgin, she learns that she cannot see truly within herself. The one part that can truly save her is blocked. These characters cannot save themselves. It’s a dark point of view, but considering the financial crisis that struck Argentina shortly after the film’s release, it was a prescient one.