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La ciénaga

Argentina, Spain, France

2001

103 Min
Color
1.85:1
Spanish
  • Currently 4.2/5 Stars.
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DIR Lucrecia Martel

EXEC Ana Aizenberg, Diego Guebel, Mario Pergolini

PROD Lita Stantic

SCR Lucrecia Martel

DP Hugo Colace

CAST Mercedes Morán, Graciela Borges, Martín Adjemián, Leonora Balcarce, Silvia Baylé, Sofia Bertolotto, Juan Cruz Bordeu, Andrea López, Daniel Valenzuela, Noelia Bravo Herrera, Sebastián Montagna, Fabio Villafane, Diego Baenas

ED Santiago Ricci

PROD DES Graciela Oderigo

SOUND Guido Berenblum, Adrián de Michele

Berlinale (Competition): Alfred Bauer Award, Toronto (Contemporary World Cinema), New York, Telluride, San Sebastián (Competition), Rotterdam (Main Programme), Vancouver, Karlovy Vary (Forum of Independents), Chicago, Helsinki

Synopsis

Chekhov in contemporary Argentina. Mecha and Gregorio are at their rundown country place near La Ciénaga with their teen children. It’s hot. The adults drink constantly; Mecha cuts herself, engendering a trip to the hospital and a visit from her son José. A cousin, Tali, brings her children. The kids are on their own, sunbathing by the filthy pool, dancing in town, running in the hills with shotguns, driving cars without licenses. One of the teen girls loves Isabel, a family servant constantly accused of stealing. Mother and son, son and sisters, teen and Isabel are in each other’s beds and bathrooms with a creepy intimacy. With no adults paying attention, who’s at risk? —IMDb

Director

Original

Lucrecia Martel

Lucrecia Martel was born in Salta, northern Argentina, in 1966. As a teenager she did a good deal of filming of her large family, but she never suspected she would end up studying filmmaking. In 1986 she moved to Buenos Aires to study communication. She made a few short films, among them Rey Muerto (Dead King) which received several international awards.

Between 1995- 1998 she directed documentaries for television and children’s programs with a dark sense of humor and which were widely acclaimed by the Argentine press. In 1999 she received the Sundance+-/ NHK Filmmakers Award for her script La Cienaga (The Swamp) about families in Northern Argentina. —Filmbug

Interview with Lucrecia Martel 

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MBmn

17Dec11

How is it that Martel makes all women, even the youngest of her girls, seem revolutionary without falling into feminist traps?

Varun Anisetty likes this

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Cani

3Dec11

Martel’s masterpiece. It contains what is perhaps the most sensitive placement of people inside the frame. Dialogue is secondary; nowhere is the friction between characters expressed better than on their faces and movements to and away from each other. Cassavetes and Dreyer would have been proud.

MBmn likes this

Picture of Laura Katherine

Laura Katherine

27Nov11

Haunting.

Sancar Seckiner

9Sep11

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240419/

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Reviews

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Untitled

By pandobl​e on September 8, 2009

from the first to the very last frame this movie WOWED me. martel’s mastery of visuals, sound (and silence), editing, storytelling, characters, atmosphere made me say “what the hell?!” out loud a few…  read review

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Lucrecia Martel's The Swamp

19 posts by 10 people 6 months ago

Any thoughts?

5 posts by 3 people over 2 years ago