The Swamp

MOVIE #1,271 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 12.07.23 part of the LUCRECIA MARTEL Director Focus What passes for plot or conflict, in any traditional manner, in Lucrecia Martel’s debut feature is barely there (e.g., the contemplation of a trip across the border to Bolivia for cheap school supplies — they never even go). Instead, the film opts to stew in the ugliness of its characters: a well-off family at their dilapidated summer home. These are talentless rich people (we never learn the source of their wealth) who hate themselves only slightly more than everyone around them. And they all just mire in the collective disdain, drinking themselves to what will surely be a premature death. With only a youngest daughter showing any semblance of empathy. But perhaps her time will come soon.

Despite the ending of her most recent work, Zama, which is so horrifying the audience can only laugh, I think I missed the inherent humor throughout that film. But there is a subtle, devil-may-care vibe penetrating the drama in her work. It's not quite nihilistic or absurd, and rarely does it register as pure ‘comedy’ on any surface-level reading, but it's there and it's effective.

There is a counterpoint to the bourgeois in the form of a constantly visiting cousin's family, with a brood of younger, often boorish children. These kids are depicted as wild and racist, but they're merely crass in a different way. The bigotry they all display for the indigenous peoples, specifically the two servants employed, is a very telling reminder that these behaviors transcend class.

This is a great movie, free-flowing but never aimless, quietly funny without telling a joke. This is a film about garbage people who nevertheless maintain some glimmer of humanity. And this is really Martel's genius: these might be characters we want to hate but she never does. These are real, extremely flawed people. They're never caricatures as is so often the case in stories of this ilk. This is the first film of a loose trilogy and I'm very intrigued to watch the rest.

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⫷ MOVIE #1,270 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,272 ⫸

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La ciénaga ([la ˈsjenaɣa] English: The Swamp) is a 2001 internationally co-produced comedy-drama film written and directed by Lucrecia Martel in her feature directorial debut. The film stars an ensemble cast featuring Graciela Borges, Mercedes Morán, Martín Adjemián and Daniel Valenzuela. It was released on February 8, 2001.