November 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #6: Trenque Lauquen + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance

In the docket since January, the film Trenque Lauquen was finally chosen by patrons as the subject for my Films in Focus podcast in November for the $5/month tier. A fusion of historical romance, whimsical sci-fi, missing person mystery, and contemplative landscape cinema, this four-hour, twelve-chapter 2022 work from the Argentine director Laura Citarella (and the collaborative collective she's a part of, El Pompero Cine) tells the many stories of botanist Laura (Laura Paredes), who disappears without explanation in the sleepy provincial town of Trenque Lauquen. Two men who were romantically involved with her, Ezequiel "Chico" (Ezequiel Pierro) and Rafa (Rafael Spregelburd), search for her across the countryside. Eventually we learn about the two personal investigations she was absorbed in: the first a series of romantic letters exchanged via books between a school official and a wealthy landowner, and the second a creature/person/alligator (?) discovered on the banks of the town pond and cared for by Dr. Elisa Esperanza (Elisa Carricajo), whose lifestyle Laura becomes slowly absorbed into. A body found on the edge of a body of water? A mysterious woman named Laura whom many love but no one quite understands? A community which, depending on who observes it, seems like a small town, rural outpost, or small city? Obviously Twin Peaks is a major reference point here. Additionally, the film is also a portrait of older millennials entering middle age without having quite settled on their identity or purpose in life and maybe even an inadvertent prediction of the cinematic and cultural erasure unleashed by the chaotic near-future president Javier Milei. There is much to discuss and I had a great time diving in...

What are the November rewards?

Zama

For more than an hour of screentime, Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) languishes as a provincial magistrate in the hot, claustrophobic, and contentious outskirts of eighteenth-century Spain's South American colonies. His desire to be transferred elsewhere perpetually butts up against the baroque mechanations of the regional bureaucracy, whose dependence upon all-too-human whims and material exploitation is laid bare in an era without any technocratic veneer. And the horny Zama's sexual appetite is even less satisfied: he's caught peeping and called a voyeur by native women on a beach, tantalized but kept at a distance by young women who sneak other lovers behind their sanctimonious father's back, and strung along for (non-sexual) favors by the elegant Luciana (Lola Dueñas) whose mature flirtation turns out to be a bow without an arrow. We eventually learn that he has a half-Indian son with whom he has only fleeting contact: whatever might actually root Zama to his surrounding environment is rejected in favor of maddening whispers, teases that can barely be called dreams let alone promises. Eventually, he will escape from this oppressive if placid cage, long past the point where it might actually be a liberation and with results that suggest it never could be anyway.

The Favorites - Historias Extraordinarias (#55)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Historias Extraordinarias (2008/Argentina/dir. Mariano Llinas) appeared at #55 on my original list.

What it is • It's a shambling shaggy-dog story told around a campfire (or better yet, around the smoldering ashes of a campfire the following, foggy morning - that's an image that suits its vibe much better). Or it's an epic tome thick not just with evocative words but suggestive sketches and lavish illustrations, so heavy you can barely lift it off the table or close it when you're ready to take a break - not that you'd want to. It's a cinematic endurance test of the most pleasurable kind, a charming, drifting variation on the visions of Tarr or Rivette; it's a winding boat trip down a leisurely flowing river; it's a daydream conjured while sitting at your desk in the back of a drab but cozy bureaucratic office buried in a nondescript building in a backwater burg located somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Historias Extraordinarias is all of these things - but specifically it is a 2008 four-hour Argentine feature film directed by Mariano Llinas, documenting three characters whose adventures - fleeing criminals after witnessing a killing, transporting possibly illegal goods down a river, and hunting an off-kilter treasure - take them through the urban and rural landscapes of Argentina at a leisurely, but never less than absorbing, pace. I rarely attend film festivals, but I stumbled across this movie when it was screened at a branch-off of the Maine International Film Festival when I was covering independent films for the Examiner website - a tangent so ordinary yet unlikely that Llinas himself might have come up with it. I was captivated and wrote about Historias Extraordinarias soon after; it remains one of the few under-the-radar films I ever beat Allan Fish to the punch on, that's for sure! (Though he wrote his own evocative review soon after.) The film remains hard to see, unfortunately, but that makes me all the more grateful I caught it when I did. Details of the plot remain hazy, but what lingers is the rare mood and tone of the thing, a light sort of magic you don't find every day - even though it's right there embedded in the "everyday", waiting to be discovered.

Why I like it •

The Headless Woman (Best of the 21st Century?)

#90 in Best of the 21st Century?, a series in which I view, for the first time, some of the most critically acclaimed films of the previous decade.

There are the mysteries that wrap us up in the procedural onscreen, giving us a pleasing diversion and a riddle to solve, and then there are the mysteries which serve as red herrings, MacGuffins for something else. L'Avventura and Blow-Up belong to that latter category, and in The Headless Woman Lucrecia Martel follows suit. But if Michelangelo Antonioni was examining the psychology and spiritual ennui in his 60s classics, Martel's underlying investigation is primarily social. Vero (Maria Oneta) is driving down a dirt road by herself, returning from a get-together with her friends, mostly middle-class, middle-aged women like herself. Her cell phone rings and she leans over to take the call - the car slams into something, shudders and Vero freezes. We don't see what she sees - we're not even sure if she does see anything. She trembles, puts her sunglasses on, takes a few moments and then drives on, massaging her head which she hit in the accident. Looking back out of the car we can see what appears to be a crushed bicycle in the road - but this is not necessarily to say she hit its rider; in the first scene, a few children were chasing one another around and one of them easily could have left his bike in the road. Or so we hope - as does Vero. A torrential downpour has just begun, and as she drives into the rain she does not look back.

Historias Extraordinarias

What comes to mind when you hear the words “extraordinary stories”? An adventurous journey down a long river, pursuing a strange and possibly illicit mission? A mysterious murder, witnessed by a man who flees and hides from his pursuers while unraveling the crime? A journey spanning years and continents, in pursuit of a buried treasure? Is it war which quickens the pulse, with its threat of violent death and suggestion of enemies hidden away in the jungle, waiting to launch a guerrilla attack? Or perhaps you are a romantic, and your extraordinary story would involve an enigmatic woman, whose enchanted entrance into your life seems to foreshadow an implicit departure – one which arrives one day, confirming your suspicions while breaking your heart. As you’ll notice, the title of Argentinian writer/director Mariano Llinás’ remarkable film is plural. Not one but all of these storylines are pursued (simultaneously, no less), with surprising results.