The Swamp

The Swamp

(La Ciénaga)

Lucrecia Martel

  • 2001
  • Argentina
  • Drama
  • 1h43mn
  • Original version with French subtitles
  • Color
During a sweltering summer in northern Argentina, a bourgeois family’s daily life unfolds on their vast estate, between idleness, boozing, secrets and hidden tensions… As the parents go astray, their children look on.
Lucrecia Martel’s first feature film is a masterstroke. She films a family’s gradual decay, a swamp of human relationships, with a lingering gentleness that increases its violence tenfold, capturing suspended moments and insignificant moments with astonishing virtuosity. By turns hypnotic and unsettling, ruthless and compassionate, La Ciénaga captures merciless social class divisions and latent racism as well as the children and teenagers’ points of view. Absolutely sublime.

Rebeka Warrior

I really like this Argentinian filmmaker who depicts an idle, unproductive, racist and rather degenerate bourgeoisie. Atmospheres are oppressing, suffocating, and subtly funny. In La Ciénaga, the mother is an alcoholic, the father inexistant and the children uncared for. Ciénaga means “swamp” in Spanish but it’s also the name of the town next to the holiday home where the film takes place.

Screenings

11/09 • 21h45 • Screen 300

Presented by Rebeka Warrior

Credits

  • With : Mercedes Morán, Graciela Borges, Martín Adjemián, Leonora Balcarce, Silvia Baylé...
  • Screenplay : Lucrecia Martel
  • Photography : Hugo Colace
  • Editing : Santiago Ricci
  • Production : Lisa Stantic