‘La Ciénaga’ Movie Review: An Intimate Portrait of Life in Latin America
Lucrecia Martel was born in Salta, Argentina in 1966. As the sister of seven siblings, she grew up in a middle-class family. She became infatuated with Latin languages and Greek Mythology, even going as far as enrolling in a Catholic school only to study such subjects. By the age of 15, she discovered film. Not the art of film, but the literal action of grabbing a camera and filming her surroundings. Her family, conversations, and daily, mundane happenings were captured by a young Martel. Little did she knew back then, that 20 years later, she would release her debut feature film, La Ciénaga (2001). Her future career as a filmmaker would lead her to become one of the most important voices in Latin American cinema. A figure, an artist and a true auteur. Martel is an icon and a largely influential voice for women in the world of cinema.
Martel has directed several films by now. Her most recent, Zama (2017) was released to great acclaim and a wide audience. Since she’s always dedicated herself to directing intimate and independent films, she’s never really gotten a big, worldwide release, and I’m sure she doesn’t intend to have one. Martel loves storytelling, and finding creative ways to center her main characters, giving them a true voice and persona. Her previous two films are centered around a woman in distressing situations. The main character in La Niña Santa (2004) (The Holy Girl) is Amalia, a teenager starting to explore her sexuality, which intersects with her religious desires. With this film, we begin to see how Martel constantly uses her life experiences as a direct inspiration for her art. I say art, because that’s the most appropriate term to catalogue her work. In her follow up, La Mujer Sin Cabeza (2008) (The Headless Woman) Veronica is haunted by the possibility that she might’ve killed a person with her car while driving at night. Caught in a nightmarish situation, Veronica is driven to near insanity.
Of Martel’s body of work, there is nothing more impactful to me than her debut film. La Ciénaga is a film so dense and so rich in color and atmosphere. The palpable heat is heavily felt, as characters visibly sweat. Also, Martel has said before that she relishes sound. Here, she opts for a music-less, scoreless experience. Instead, we hear the never-ending sounds of the Argentinean jungle. The foreground is alive, and it feels oddly calming. Add to that the sounds of mundane activities, for example the sound of wine and ice being poured into a glass, the old television set with its fuzziness and water dripping; that’s how you get the atmosphere that Martel has so effortlessly crafted here. The lush background of humid foliage adorns the film perfectly, and only adds to the feeling of exhaustion.
There isn’t much of a relevant plot, per se. Sure, it follows a traditional linear narrative, but all scenes and events are just small glimpses into the lives of the subjects we are seeing. The two characters that are given more focus are Mecha, played perfectly by Graciela Borges and her “cousin” Tali played by the wonderful Mercedes Moran. Mecha lives in a country house with her entire family. From her and her husband Gregorio’s looks, they are some kind of decadent bourgeois family who escape each summer to their summer house to rest and drink all day long. Their children, which range from toddlers to teenagers, run wild through the house and the depths of the jungle as if that were their playground. As a consequence, the boys adapt a feral, almost primitive look. On the complete opposite spectrum, there’s Tali, also a mother, she lives in the nearby town of La Cienaga with her strict and hard working husband Rafael. Often, the lives of these two women are juxtaposed by Martel.
The thing is, both women are victims of the patriarchal system they live in. Mecha seems like a woman who is living a pretty good life, laying down on her country house, relaxing and drinking wine alongside her family. The reality is that she is in a troubling situation. Her kids run wild without any supervision whatsoever, and Gregorio is barely even there. He is mostly drunk throughout the film, same as Mecha, but in difference to her character, he is an inert presence with absolutely nothing to say. Yet, he is the man of the house. He doesn’t even protest when Mecha asks him to sleep somewhere else to have the bed for herself. This puts Mecha in almost a tragic hero kind of situation if it weren't for that fact that she is heading on the same direction with no brakes on. After an accident, she is sent to a nearby hospital to get some stitches, and as a result has to rest all day in bed, where she drinks, watches TV, and yells at the house maids.
Tali has a much more middle-class lifestyle. Her husband is working constantly, leaving her with the task of taking care of their children. Although the film never explicitly touch on the subject, there is a certain look in Tali’s eyes. She does not seem happy with her lifestyle, neither with Rafael, a much more strict husband. You can tell by the little comments she drops, concerned about how Rafael might react. Tali, too, is trapped in her lifestyle.
Menwhile, Momi (Sofia Bertolotto) acts an extra main character in the story. She’s one of Mecha’s children, and she spends her summer days not running around with shotguns and machetes like the boys do, but rather spending time with Isabel (Andrea Lopez), one of the maids. Momi is in love with her, even though she has a boyfriend, and despite Mecha’s hard feelings toward the house maids. It’s clear that Martel loves to focus on her women characters, giving them a lot more depth and dimension throughout the story.
La Cienaga is also a sharp, realistic portrait of Latin American culture and lifestyle. With a brief glimpse, these families could be from anywhere around the world. There is a recurring moment I noticed throughout the film. It’s barely ever mentioned or acknowledged by the characters until the very end. A news report plays through different scenes, it’s about the miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary on a rooftop in what seems like an impoverished neighborhood. In Latin America, there is a huge infatuation with the Virgin Mary. Throughout the years, she has become a symbol of love, hope and purity. There have been many appearances and miracles linked with these. People look up to those events, to the point where many people have claimed to see the virgin. It struck me as such a Latin American characteristic, I noticed it immediately; it’s unmistakable. Martel often seems interested in religion, and its effect in Argentinean society and culture.
There’s also the connection to nature. The wilderness, much as Mecha’s children, is almost a character of its own. The country house in which they live is at the point of near crumbling, with its flora around it threatening to reclaim its territory. Mecha and Gregorio aren’t going to do something about it, as they paralyzed forever in their high society ways even if they can’t afford the lifestyle they once had. It’s almost as if they’re losing complete control of their household. Everyone is stumbling around, half-naked, playing, screaming, and one of the boys no longer has an eye because of an accident. There is no sense of boundaries, and it doesn’t help that very little context is given by Martel to explain the relation of all these people.
In La Ciénaga, women are at the forefront, standing against the positions they have been put in. Truth is, they aren’t heroines; Martel makes that very clear. Mecha and Tali cannot escape the life they currently have. They have both opposites of a husband and still, they can’t find contentment in their life. Martel doesn’t want for us to root for them, or imagine a solution; like I said, it’s merely a window into a couple of days in the life of these families. By the end, there is a respect I feel towards the two leads, and I believe it was Martel’s intention to showcase the voices of her characters in such a strong way. No sugarcoating or exaggeration, the situation is presented as it truly is, and by end, it creates a sort of melancholic feeling of tragedy and a vicious cycle of inevitability.
The very last words are spoken by Momi after she visits the spot where the virgin made an appearance. In a fit of sadness because Isabel had to leave, she goes to town and back only to tell one of her sisters “I didn’t see anything”. A haunting ending to a seemingly mundane drama.
Lucrecia Martel’s debut is a lot of things; savage, ugly, slow, detailed, and over all, an incredibly beautiful yet heartbreaking look at life in Latin America. The characters seem trapped in a state of decadence, and they are either fighting it day to day or laying in bed, waiting for their moment of death. All in all, it’s her crowning achievement, and a masterpiece that is still one of the greatest works of Latin American cinema.
