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The Salta Trilogy of Lucrecia Martel
Oscar Jubis
University of Miami, [email protected]
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UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
THE SALTA TRILOGY OF LUCRECIA MARTEL
By
Oscar Jubis
A THESIS
Submitted to the Faculty
of the University of Miami
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Master of Arts
Coral Gables, Florida
December 2009
©2009
Oscar Jubis
All Rights Reserved
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
THE SALTA TRILOGY OF LUCRECIA MARTEL
Oscar Jubis
Approved:
______________
William Rothman, Ph.D.
Professor of Motion Pictures
______________
Terri A. Scandura, Ph.D.
Dean of the Graduate School
______________
Christina Lane, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Motion Pictures
______________
Yvonne Gavela, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Modern
Languages and Literatures
JUBIS, OSCAR
The Salta Trilogy of Lucrecia Martel
(M.A., Film Studies)
(December 2009)
Abstract of a thesis at the University of Miami
Thesis supervised by Professor William Rothman
Number of pages in text (109)
During the past decade, Lucrecia Martel has emerged as the most respected
filmmaker from South America. This thesis is motivated by my conviction that
Martel’s films are worthy of serious engagement and critical scrutiny. It is also
motivated by my curiosity about the seemingly inexhaustible pleasure and
edification I derive from them. Martel describes her filmmaking as “cine de autor”
(auteur cinema). Indeed, her films evidence a personal involvement in every
aspect of filmmaking. This thesis will define and explore the characteristics and
conditions of her authorship. This thesis constitutes an expression of the
enduring usefulness of auteurist criticism. In this case, this critical approach is
entirely appropriate and likely to yield the deepest insights into the films.
The introduction to my thesis provides pertinent biographical information and
the necessary socio-cultural context to set the stage for an intellectual immersion
into her three features to date: The Swamp (2001), The Holy Girl (2004) and The
Headless Woman (2008). I propose that these films constitute a trilogy that
distills Martel’s experience of growing up in the remote province of Salta and
critiques the social and cultural forces at play in provincial Latin American life.
However, no matter how specific the sense of place the films convey and how
grounded they are in subjective experience, they illuminate universal aspects of
being a person in the world and contain progressive prescriptions for living from
which anyone can benefit.
My research into the literature on the films of Lucrecia Martel failed to find any
serious and thorough appraisal of Lucrecia Martel’s films as a trilogy. While my
analysis benefits from familiarity with the available literature, the operative critical
approach privileges my direct experience with the audiovisual material provided
by the films. Each film will be subjected to a close reading illustrated with images
from it. These readings focus sharply on certain sequences I deem crucial to the
conveyance of characterization, meaning and ideology. These readings aim to
think with the films rather than think against or about them. They explore the
themes and issues that arise within the narratives of the films as well as the
formal means by which they do.
DEDICATIONS
This thesis is dedicated to Professor Bill Rothman whose work in
Film Studies fueled my desire to pursue a degree in the field, and to
Cristi Jubis whose support and encouragement made it possible.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Chapter
1 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………..1
A Work of Auteurist Criticism………………………………... 7
The Film Career of Lucrecia Martel………………………… 14
Nuevo Cine Argentino………………………………………....15
Rey Muerto...........................................................................20
The Girl from Salta……………………………………………..21
2 THE SWAMP…………………………………………………...24
3 THE HOLY GIRL…………………………………………….....53
4 THE HEADLESS WOMAN……………………………………78
References……………………………………………………………106
iv
Chapter One
Introduction
1
2
This thesis is motivated by my strong conviction that the films written and
directed by Lucrecia Martel are worthy of serious engagement and critical
scrutiny. It is also motivated by my curiosity about the seemingly inexhaustible
pleasure and edification I derive from her films. While it is significant that Martel
calls what she does cine de autor (auteur cinema), this is less important than
whether her films provide evidence of Martel as a film author. Indeed, her films
evidence her personal involvement in every aspect of filmmaking at every step in
the production process. This thesis will define and explore the characteristics and
conditions of her authorship.
This introduction to The Salta Trilogy of Lucrecia Martel will provide the
necessary socio-cultural context and pertinent biographical information about
Martel to set the stage for an intellectual immersion into her three features: The
Swamp (La ciénaga, 2001), The Holy Girl (La niña santa, 2004) and The
Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza, 2008). This introduction also addresses
challenges to the idea of film authorship and the practice of auteurist criticism.
The remainder of my thesis is dependent on close readings of the films
accompanied by screen captures. A work of criticism of a primarily visual art form
is enhanced by visual material excerpted from the film(s) because it serves to
illustrate the critical commentary. It is an approach to criticism I learned from
Professor Bill Rothman, beginning with a reading of his groundbreaking
Hitchcock-The Murderous Gaze (1982). This approach is flexible enough to suit
criticism of films as disparate as Hitchcock’s and Martel’s and rightfully based
solely on the writer’s experience with the audiovisual material the films provide.
3
In other words, I subscribe to the idea that the best film criticism is firmly
grounded on and originates from observable and audible detail. The complexity
and density of these films demand a close scrutiny of their detailed fabric in order
to offer deep insights into their meaning and artistry.
My experience with the films reveals a number of stylistic trademarks and
identifies a series of recurring themes. Martel’s cinema is essentially
autobiographic in that the films originate from memories of life in the province
during her formative years. These memories are, to a remarkable extent,
processed through the senses. A great deal of attention is devoted to how her
characters perceive the world around them, the link between perception and
emotion, and the interpretation of reality based on those perceptions and
influenced by those emotions. The films are replete with scenes of characters
engaged in sensory perception, in the reception of stimuli on which their views of
the world are based. Additionally, as I will illustrate, the films elicit metaphorical
allusions from the activities of the senses.
The tendency to show characters at the moment of perception corresponds to
a sensualist view that underscores that sensations are the building blocks of
cognition. In view of how the first two films of the trilogy depict the limitations of
traditional worship, it can be argued that Martel’s worldview borrows from the
positivism of Auguste Comte. I am referring specifically to the notion that a
“religion of humanity” would or should fulfill the role of fomenting social cohesion
once held by organized religion. The films endorse a universal morality based on
4
the commonality of human nature and the need to respond to human frailty and
transgression with acknowledgement and compassion.
Working within a primarily visual medium, Lucrecia Martel aims to elevate
sound to a position of equality with the images. The script and the sound design
of her films are painstakingly constructed over a long period of time until they are
perfectly calibrated and faithfully followed during the shoot. What I call extraimaged sound, aural stimuli produced outside our views of the world-on-film, is
particularly important to narrative thrust and the conveyance of meaning. It calls
attention to the space that exists beyond what the screen allows us to see. Very
often in Martel’s films, sound precedes the image with which it is associated to
make the viewer conscious of its ability to have independent impact on thought
and emotion.
Whereas the soundtracks of Martel’s films are planned beforehand, their
mise-en-scène is fluid and improvised. Camera placement and movement,
number and length of shots, blocking (the positioning of actors within a filmic
space), and lighting are determined on the set. These aspects are worked out
5
depending on what each scene is meant to communicate to the spectator. There
is no conscious effort to either adhere to an established or “classical” style or to
disregard it just for the sake of being original or on the “cutting-edge”. At times,
reaction shots precede views of the action that motivates them, forcing the
viewer to reconsider the connection between cause and effect. One salient
characteristic of Martel’s aesthetics is the almost total absence of orientation or
establishing shots, which she finds too impersonal to suit her. It is incumbent
upon the viewer to be keenly attentive and observant to clues in order to achieve
the temporal and spatial orientation that establishing shots usually provide.
Generally, Martel thinks of the camera as offering the point of view of a child
who perceives everything that is happening in the world-on-film but cannot form
judgments about it yet. However, the philosophical perspective of the films as
whole entities is that of the Lucrecia Martel. She reviews her youth from the
adult, analytical perspective afforded by geographic and temporal distance. And
yet, her analysis is grounded in the concrete details of daily living made possible
by the proximity and accessibility of her memories. Martel’s films are not difficult
6
but they demand a viewer’s active participation. They are accessible to every
viewer willing to approach them in a state of contemplation and reflection.
Lucrecia Martel’s films reveal a number of preoccupations and thematic
concerns: the lives of middle-class girls living in provinces where class and race
are sharply defined, the conflict between a powerful, natural sensuality and
religious, or more specifically Catholic, dogma, the exercise of patriarchal power,
class privilege and disavowal, the decadence of bourgeois society, the
transmission of dysfunctional patterns of behavior across generations, and,
perhaps most forcefully, the need to hold oneself accountable and to assume
personal responsibility.
The narratives of her films are reticent and elliptical. They are built from an
accretion of relatively insignificant observations that accrue significance and
resonance as the films progress. Their suspended endings require the viewer’s
active and alert participation in order to achieve closure. The refusal to render a
judgment on the characters, and the ambiguity and subtlety that permeate the
films can make them seem cold and elusive to some viewers, whereas others are
fascinated by the freedom to ponder a variety of possible interpretations and
character judgments. These qualities make the films such fascinating subjects for
film criticism. It is important to note that no matter how specific the sense of place
the films convey and how grounded they are in Martel’s personal experience, the
films illuminate universal aspects of being a person in the world and contain
progressive prescriptions for living from which anyone can benefit.
7
A Work of Auteurist Criticism
Auteurist criticism had its genesis in the writings of Cahiers du Cinema writers
such as François Truffaut and was popularized in the United States by Andrew
Sarris. These texts privileged certain Hollywood directors as being the rightful
authors of the films they directed. Auteurist criticism has been challenged based
on a number of alleged limitations. I will enumerate some of the most pertinent
and discuss how they apply, or fail to apply, to an auteurist analysis of Martel’s
films. My purpose is to provide the evidence necessary to unequivocally
designate Lucrecia Martel as the author of these films.
1) The fact that the films under study by auteurist critics were made under the
aegis of a studio system that exerted a great degree of creative influence on
them. The production of Hollywood films of the Golden Era followed an industrial
method, largely motivated by financial considerations. There is a direct
correlation between the size of a film’s budget and the extent to which producers
and studio executives become involved in artistically relevant aspects of film
production.
Martel’s films are not produced by a studio. They are the products of the
transnational funding and spectatorship that characterize a globalized film
culture. The Swamp and The Holy Girl were produced by Lita Stantic. She
gained prominence as the producer of the films of the late, feminist director Maria
Luisa Bemberg (Camila, Nobody’s Wife, Miss Mary) and has an impeccable
reputation as a producer who “respects the auteur.”1 During the past decade, her
8
connections with European and local funding sources have facilitated the
financing of several prominent films by a new generation of Argentine directors.
Martel’s films are financed through numerous funding entities from several
countries. Pedro and Agustin Almodovar loved The Swamp and proceeded to cofinance The Holy Girl and The Headless Woman through their production
company El Deseo, S.A. However, no single funding source is indispensable.
My research uncovered a single, isolated institutional attempt to influence the
content of a film by Martel. The Sundance jury who gave an award to Martel for
her script of The Swamp recommended that the ambitious narrative be pared
down and given a more conventional structure. Martel refused to make any
changes, resulting in a particularly challenging film with seemingly inexhaustible
riches.
Moreover, the small size of the budgets of the films contributes to
Lucrecia Martel’s complete creative control over them. Consequently, criticism of
auteur theory based on its preclusion of the economic pressures exerted by the
“industry” is simply irrelevant in this case.
2) Underestimation or neglect of the artistic contribution of the scriptwriter and
the writer of the original material on which scripts are sometimes based.
Lucrecia Martel writes her own scripts. They are based on her own memories,
experiences, and observations. She has made a number of statements over the
years that attest to the personal, even more precisely autobiographical, nature of
the narratives of the Salta trilogy. Martel’s writing process is long and arduous.
She reveals that deviations from the script during shooting are extremely rare.
9
Martel has recently completed a script for what might become her fourth feature,
“El Eternauta”, which would be her first film based on existing literary material. “El
Eternauta” (Sailor of Eternity) is an allegorical, serialized, science fiction novel
written by Héctor Oesterheld in the 1950s. It revolves around an extraterrestrial
invasion of Buenos Aires. Martel has been attached to this project since May of
2008, when it was announced at Cannes and reported in Variety. Certainly, a
critical approach to such a film would have to consider the layer of meaning
provided by the original material and the process of adaptation from novel to film.
Martel’s mere willingness to involve herself in such a project suggests that a
phase in her artistic trajectory has ended and a distinctive new phase in set to
begin. It strengthens my conviction that this is a particularly apt time to appraise
and analyze Martel’s filmic career to date.
3) It has also been argued that auteurist criticism tends to ignore the structure of
meaning films inherit from the prevailing conventions of the genre to which they
belong.
The Salta trilogy does not have antecedents in any recognized, well-defined
genre. However, Martel has for years expressed an interest in making a genre
film, perhaps a horror film. If the “El Eternauta” project comes to fruition, the
resulting film would be her first genre film. A thorough reading of such a film
would have to include a consideration of it as a sci-fi movie but the films of the
Salta trilogy are free of genre indebtedness.
10
4) Neglect of the fact that some actors are “stars” whose persona and the
perceived expectations of their fan base influence creative aspects such as
characterization. The term “star vehicle” conveys most eloquently the potential
constraints on the director as sole author of his or her films as a consequence of
the casting of a prominent, popular actor.
None of Lucrecia Martel’s films to date feature “stars” of Argentine cinema
such as Cecilia Roth, Norma Aleandro, Ricardo Darín, Federico Luppi, and
Daniel Hendler. She prefers to cast so-called character actors in major adult
roles. Graciela Borges, who plays Mecha in The Swamp, played important roles
in the films directed by the great Leopoldo Torre-Nilsson from the late 1950s to
the early 1970s. However, she has had a lower profile since then and had not
appeared in any films for almost a decade prior to her award-winning
performance in Martel’s film. Mercedes Morán gained notoriety only after she
appeared in The Swamp and The Holy Girl. Martel invariably casts non-actors in
child and adolescent roles.
5) Neglect of the influence of governing bodies and regulatory agencies such as
Classical-era production codes or the National Board of Review on film content.
At certain historical moments, governments may meddle with film production in
various ways. For instance, the governments of several countries took a more
active role in regulating their film industries during World War II. Argentinean
films made when the country was governed by a dictatorial military junta were not
free to express contrary political viewpoints.
11
During this decade, Argentines enjoy wide freedom of expression. There is no
censorship of film content. There is a Ratings Board in Argentina similar to the
one operated in the United States by the Motion Pictures Association of America
to provide guidance to parents. It tends to be more liberal than its American
counterpart. Martel’s films, which received “R” ratings in the U.S., were deemed
appropriate for persons 13 years and older in Argentina.
6) Neglect of the input of other members of a film crew who sometimes have
decision-making power in their areas of expertise and leave their indelible,
discernible mark on the film. It would be grossly inadequate, for example, to
discuss the films directed by Emilio Fernández, arguably the most important
director of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, without considering the artistic
contribution of cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa.
Notwithstanding the collaborative nature of filmmaking, I must note that the
crew of Martel’s films does not include anyone with a comparably strong
presence or artistic trajectory. Producer Lisa Stantic explains: “Lucrecia even
12
decides what the most insignificant of the extras will wear. She is involved in
everything, supervises everything. She herself has to oversee every single
element that plays a part in the film.”2 Veteran cinematographer Felix Monti on
his experience working in The Holy Girl: “Everything pertaining to the mise-enscène: the lighting, camera placement, the narrative style…is absolutely,
uniquely and unreproducibly Lucrecia’s.”3 Monti explains that it was Martel who
entrusted him to devise a unique lighting scheme for The Holy Girl. She wanted
to avoid lighting that produced shadows so light would have to be distributed
evenly around each set. She wanted to be free to move the camera and shoot
the action from any angle without having to change the lighting setups. This is an
example of how the crews in Martel’s films endeavor to serve her vision.
7. The criticism of auteurism based on theories borrowed from linguistics and
psychoanalysis has assumed many variations. An essay titled ‘Death of the
Author” by French literary critic Roland Barthes has been greatly influential since
its publication in 1967. Barthes argues against inferring what a text means on the
basis of aspects of the identity of its author. I subscribe to the idea that the
distillation of meaning from a film stems from the critic’s experience of viewing
and thinking about the film. Using the terminology of postmodernism, meaning
and ideology originate in the text as received by the spectator. I propose that the
films written and directed by Lucrecia Martel internalize the concept of the
spectator being an active producer of meaning. Their reticent narratives,
suspended endings, and nonjudgmental stance towards the characters not
merely invite but demand the viewer’s participation.
13
I subscribe to postmodern views of identity as dynamic and made up of
fragments. The films written and directed by Lucrecia Martel are engaged with
the contemporary debates about the nature of identity. The social image and selfconcept of the characters are in a perpetual state of flux. This is shown to be a
consequence of their social interactions and the exteroceptions the films
represent so insistently.
Moreover, The Headless Woman is intimately
concerned with a person’s efforts to reacquire a sense of identity by weaving a
concept of self from isolated threads. The film is a meditation on the neverending and imperfect struggle to integrate the human self.
My readings of the films are not based on the director’s identity. Perhaps the
opposite is true. Given her authorial position, my close readings of the films
constitute interpretations of a fragment of the identity of Lucrecia Martel at the
time of their making. The author is never positioned above the text in these
readings. However, my thesis neither overvalues nor disregards Martel’s
statements about herself and about her films. Comments about her perceived
self-identity, her conscious intentions, and her creative process provide hints and
suggestions for a search for meaning that can only be found in the films and can
only be evidenced by them. Martel’s creative process begins by her gathering of
memorized fragments of subjective experience which are shaped into film
narratives that achieve closure and meaning in the mind of the viewer. I propose
that these films which originate from concrete, subjective experience manage to
broach universal aspects of living that concern every human being.
14
In the case of the Salta trilogy of Lucrecia Martel, auteurist criticism is entirely
appropriate and likely to yield the deepest insights into the films. While this thesis
is not meant as an unqualified or comprehensive endorsement of auteurist
criticism, it constitutes a passionate expression of its enduring usefulness.
The Film Career of Lucrecia Martel
Lucrecia Martel (1966) has become the best known film director from
Argentina over the course of a few years. Her three features have brought her
worldwide recognition as an important and accomplished filmmaker. The Swamp
had its world premiere at the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival, where it
received the Alfred Bauer Award. The following year, Martel was invited to serve
in that festival’s jury. The Swamp also won the Grand Prix at the Toulouse Film
Festival, the most important European showcase for films from Latin America. At
home, Martel’s debut feature received three awards from the Argentinean Film
Critics Association (AFCA), including Best First Film. Both The Holy Girl and The
Headless Woman premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, where
Martel was a member of the jury of the 2006 edition (she has also served as
member of the jury at the Sundance and Venice film festivals). Both films
received multiple AFCA nominations.
The films of Lucrecia Martel have received more widespread distribution
around the globe than it is typical of films from Latin America. For instance, The
Holy Girl enjoyed commercial runs in Turkey and Israel, countries where
audiences normally have access to Spanish-language films only when screened
15
as part of film festivals. The three features had their American premieres at the
very selective New York Film Festival and were subsequently released
commercially in the United States. Their critical reception has been almost
uniformly positive, with the most enthusiastic reviews coming from the most
experienced and reputable critics. Among her most fervent admirers is Kent
Jones, who wrote in a Film Comment essay: “Filmmakers all over the world,
good and bad, beat their brains in trying to achieve what comes most naturally to
this director_ it’s difficult to think of anyone else who manages such a precise
balance between all the various elements of cinema with such apparent ease.”4
Nuevo Cine Argentino
Lucrecia Martel is typically associated with Nuevo Cine Argentino (New
Argentine Cinema), a flourishing of filmmaking of distinction that has emerged in
Argentina during the past decade or so. A detailed exploration of the social,
political, economic and cultural factors that facilitated the development of this
new “wave” is beyond the scope of this thesis. But it is imperative to make a brief
stab at defining New Argentine Cinema and how Martel fits within it.
The usual difficulties of attempting to define an artistic movement arise in
connection with the Nuevo Cine Argentino (NCA). It defies generalizations. This
is certainly not a monolithic or homogeneous movement. There is no dominant
ideology. It does not have a credo or a manifesto. Its members are as
heterogeneous as Nouvelle Vague directors like Jean Luc Godard and Eric
16
Rohmer or the directors associated with Nuevo Cine Español. Generally
speaking, NCA directors Adrian Caetano, Albertina Carri, Lisandro Alonso,
Martin Rejtman, Pablo Trapero, Ana Katz, and Martel aim to make films that
differ from those made within the Argentine film industry in their avoidance of
genre formulas and costumbrismo, an artistic tendency to romanticize and
trivialize representations of social customs. Quintin states:
Whether polished like Martel’s The Swamp or untidy like Modelo
73, these films share a desire for cinematic truth and an air of being
an artistic adventure with no safety net. At a time when most of the
world’s films are moving towards a hybrid cinema, adding local,
exotic elements to conventional and globalized dramatic
developments, Argentina has the luxury of producing a collection of
works which are genuinely local, more free than perfect, more
valuable as explorations than as merchandise.5
To generalize about the commonalities between the films made by directors
associated with the NCA is to risk being inaccurately reductive and categorical.
However, having offered this cautionary note, I notice that the vast majority of the
NCA films I have watched place a greater responsibility on the viewer to
consummate the narrative and to infer meaning. They generally demand
considerable attention, alertness and concentration on the part of the viewer.
This is a consequence of the prevalence of elliptical narrative structures,
ambiguous characterizations, and enigmatic endings.
In “Other Worlds: New Argentine Film”, Gonzalo Aguilar identifies some
differences between older and mainstream Argentinean versus NCA films. In the
former, he argues, sound is subordinated to the image and conventionally serves
to complete the narrative whereas a significant number of NCA films treat sound
17
as a realm “that has a relative autonomy with respect to the image or that
provides it with new dimensions.”6 He also notices how many of the NCA films
incorporate television broadcasts and depict characters watching them to register
the impact of mass media on private and public life. Besides Aguilar, my
bibliographic research failed to find other authors making such specific claims
about NCA films as a whole. Aguilar’s observations do apply to the films of
Lucrecia Martel. However, it behooves me to declare that I am not in a position to
judge the validity of such generalizations about the numerous and
heterogeneous NCA films.
The films made by NCA directors are almost invariably set in the present,
intimate rather than epic in scope, and have scripts written by the filmmakers. It
is safe to say that most of these directors are the product of academia. Lucrecia
Martel was briefly enrolled at the short-lived Avellaneda Experimental School and
at the well-regarded Escuela Nacional de Experimentación y Realización
Cinematográfica (ENERC) but did not earn a degree. It is perhaps indicative of
her maverick personality that she often refers to herself as being a “self-taught”
director.
Generally speaking, NCA directors were part of a significant increase in
enrollment in film schools during the 1990s. They belong to a post-dictatorship
generation that experienced wild swings in the economic health of their country. I
venture to say that most of the films avoid being overly didactic or taking a
specifically political stance. Their socio-political commentary is delivered subtly or
obliquely, in direct contrast to the Oscar-winner The Official Story, the best-
18
known Argentine film of the 1980s. For instance, the economic morass in which
Argentina found itself at the time The Swamp was released is never discussed by
the characters of that film. The financial downturn is merely reflected in the
dilapidated condition of the farm house where half the film is set. Similarly, it is
the primary setting of The Holy Girl, a once luxurious hotel and spa, which stands
as a testament to the South American nation’s illustrious and affluent past. By
evoking that past, Martel makes us aware of the contemporary decline in
economic health. However, the film does not theorize about the possible causes
and potential solutions to such a state of affairs. I propose that the Salta trilogy’s
last film, The Headless Woman constitutes a Martel’s conscious move towards
engagement with Argentina’s political history. This film dramatizes the
mechanisms by which a ruling class maintains power and protects its own. Then
it draws a connection between the characters and the generation of their parents,
who propped up a dictatorship and presided over a period of severe human
rights violations. Even so, the correlation is achieved obliquely, through analogy,
metaphor, and anachronistic use of popular music. Even Albertina Carri’s The
Blondes (Los rubios, 2002), a film about the kidnapping and murder of her
parents during the dictatorship, unfolds as more of a meditation on the
impossibility of apprehending and reconstructing the past than an denunciation of
an authoritarian regime.
Another characteristic of Nuevo Cine Argentino is that the films generally have
lower budgets than those financed directly through Argentina’s film industry. The
19
films were often labeled “independent” meaning, in this case, made outside
traditional avenues of financing such as well-established production companies.
The revival of the film festivals in Buenos Aires and Mar de Plata, a film school
boom, and increased institutional subsidies played roles in the emergence of
NCA. The enthusiastic critical reception of Pablo Trapero’s Crane World (Mundo
grua, 1999) and Adrian Caetano’s Pizza, Beer and Smokes (Pizza, birra, faso,
1998), which attracted a sizable, young audience, provided encouragement to
the young filmmakers. At Rotterdam, Crane World won both the Jury Prize and
the FIPRESCI prize. At the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, Lucrecia Martel
received the Sundance/NHK Filmmakers award for her script for The Swamp.
Other Argentinean films received similar recognition at major European festivals.
The filmmakers began to tap into European film subsidies, including the
Rotterdam Film Festival’s Hubert Bals Fund. In 2000, 43% of new releases in
Argentina were debut features. The number jumped to “60% in 2001,”7 the year
The Swamp premiered as a competition selection at the 2001 Berlinale. A
successful tour of the festival circuit and commercial distribution deals followed,
making Lucrecia Martel a household name in the globalized film culture.
It can be argued that the birth of Nuevo Cine Argentino took place in May of
1995. Several directors including Trapero and Martel released their short films as
part of the anthology feature Historias breves (Brief Stories). In this regard, there
is congruence between the emergence of NCA and the development of
Taiwanese national cinema, which was inaugurated with the release of In Our
Time (1982), the portmanteau feature which includes first films by I-Chen Ko and
20
the late, great Edward Yang (A Brighter Summer Day, Yi Yi). This strategy of
composing a feature out of short films from promising new directors to enhance
their visibility has been repeated a number of times in Argentina. There are now
four “sequels” to the original Historias breves.
Rey muerto
Martel’s contribution to Historias breves is titled Rey muerto, a feminist
western with an uncharacteristic palette of saturated, bright colors. The 12minute film opens with a view of a televised image followed by a shot of a man
who has a crush on the woman doing live broadcasting. The next scene shows
the brutish man driving a pickup along a dusty road. When he hits a pedestrian,
he exits the vehicle and proceeds to finish off the poor guy. Cabezas, they call
him, an alcoholic thug with a wife named Juana. She is introduced to us after she
has finally decided to run away with their three children. There is a flashback, the
only one in Martel’s filmography, to a domestic abuse scenario. Cabezas gets
21
word of Juana’s actions and attempts to stop her but Juana prevails, in surprising
fashion. It is squarely a feminist statement devoid of subtlety.
The short film’s title means “dead king” and refers to both Cabezas and a
small town in the province of Salta. Martel calls Rey muerto “my first little film
school”, “an attempt to make a Western of my own”, and something that “feels
separate from my other movies.”8 Without disowning Rey muerto, Martel qualifies
it as a learning opportunity and a revisionist genre exercise. It evidences Martel’s
trademark elliptical narrative, an early tendency to keep the camera in a fixed
position, and her eschewing of establishing shots. But Martel had yet to develop
a mature, personal aesthetics. She still had to figure out how to make her movies
fully reflect her own way of seeing and perceiving the world.
Unlike the features, Rey Muerto has clearly demarcated heroes and villains
and, consequently, a narrow interpretative range. Martel points out that the
important link between the short and the features is “the geography.”9
The Girl from Salta
Lucrecia Martel (1966) was born and raised in the province of Salta. All her
films are set in its rural small towns and unassuming cities. This province, located
far from sophisticated Buenos Aires, borders Bolivia and shares that country’s
ethnic division between upper and middle-class descendants of European
immigrants and an indigenous lower-class. The whole northeast region of
Argentina, including Salta, has been marginalized culturally. The country’s
cultural identity is tied to the beef-producing Pampas, its vineyards, the tango,
22
and Buenos Aires, a city still referred as “the Paris of South America”. Salta has
not been incorporated into the national identity. Martel‘s films, given their cache
and recognition, insert the landlocked province into the cultural map of a nation
engaged in an ongoing process of self-definition. Her three features constitute
what I call her Salta trilogy.
In a way, Martel’s films replicate the experience of a girl enraptured by stories
pregnant with poetry and myth told by her parents and grandparents; partially
understood tales that incite a child’s imagination and reverberate indefinitely. Her
father’s purchase of a movie camera was an event of significant formative import.
Perhaps due to the bulk and weight of cameras sold in the 1980s, or perhaps
out of sheer intuition, little Lucrecia would simply place the camera in a high
traffic area of the house (atop the kitchen counter, for instance, as she has
explained) rather than attempt to track the action. Martel was fascinated by the
sounds and images captured by a fixed camera as people moved in and out of
frame. She seems to have developed a sense of realism characterized by
23
overlapping layers of audiovisual activity and grasped the concept of off-screen
space at a very early age.
The Salta Trilogy of Lucrecia Martel aims not simply to identify and explore
the recurring themes and stylistic trademarks that characterize Martel as a film
author with a unique vision. My thesis is valuable to the extent that it increases
the readers’ understanding of the films and enhances their enjoyment of them.
Martel’s creative process begins by her gathering of memorized fragments of
subjective experience which are shaped into film narratives that require a
viewer’s inference to reveal their rich meaning. I propose that these films built on
the most elemental and personal components of experience manage to tackle
complex issues and achieve universal relevance. I hope my close readings bear
this out.
Chapter Two
The Swamp
24
25
The Swamp concerns two families: one living in the city of Salta and another
living a few miles away, in a decaying estate next to a small farm where bell
peppers are grown. Mecha lives there with her husband Gregorio, teenage
daughters Vero and Momi, and pubescent son Joaquin. Their place is called La
Mandragora, Spanish for mandrake, a plant with alleged hallucinogenic and
sedative effects historically used in pagan rituals.
First, Martel wants us to attend to the film’s soundtrack. The screen is black
as we hear sounds of crickets chirping and wind passing through leafy trees.
There is a shot of tree tops against a cloudy sky. The next view shows red
peppers left out to ripen. We hear an ominous blast that could be a gunshot or
thunder announcing an impending storm. Martel’s expressive use of what I will
call extra-imaged sound10, aural stimuli produced beyond our views of a film’s
fictional world, becomes an authorial signature.
In fact, Martel conceives the film’s soundtrack in a very deliberate manner
before any consideration of the mise-en-scène, which is mostly improvised.
Martel ascribes the primacy of sound in her films to the auditory nature of her
earliest encounters with narrative, through the tradition of oral storytelling. The
first scene shows an indolent, inebriated middle-aged group at the edge of a dirty
oval pool. Martel uses diegetic sound expressively. The metal chairs they use
make a harsh, grating sound when dragged over the concrete floor. When Martel
isolates and intensifies this sound for our perception, it acquires a power of
signification the sound does not have naturally. So treated, the sound becomes
something for the viewer to remember and incorporate into his or her search for
26
meaning. Mecha trips on a chair and falls down, breaking the empty glasses she
has collected from her guests. Gregorio insensitively tells her to get up without
offering assistance. He walks around his wife to get to where he can refill his
glass. Their guests do not notice or never mind. Perhaps we are meant to
associate the unpleasantness of the sound with this bunch, dragging their deck
chairs like the debris of their own lives.
Inside the house, the young women slumber. A bedroom scene, the first of
many, introduces 15 year-old Momi and Isabel, the maid. Momi wakes up from a
siesta next to Isabel, grabs the edge of Isabel’s sleeve and smells it praying:
“Lord, thanks for giving me Isabel”. This is the first of a type of image that is
characteristic of Martel’s approach to characterization: images of characters in
the process of perception. Martel isolates characters engaged in seeing, hearing,
smelling, tasting and touching. In her second film, The Holy Girl, the emphasis on
these activities becomes even more pronounced by means of close-ups, of ears
and hands for instance.
27
The interaction between Isabel and Momi has a definite sensual quality. Their
special intimacy is depicted with wordless clarity when Isabel, in the most casual
manner, feeds Momi.
The impression one gets is that Isabel, almost by default, occupies a place in
Momi’s affective universe that her mother has vacated. Mecha has been too
wrapped up in her own problems and too intoxicated by alcohol to properly care
for her children.
Momi overlooks or ignores certain unwritten norms about class relations.
Judging by the pejoratives used liberally in the film to refer to those in the lower
or servant class, the class divide is inherently racial. Even Momi resorts to ethnic
slurs when upset with Isabel. Momi’s emotional attachment and dependence on
Isabel becomes intensified by Mecha’s threats to fire her for allegedly stealing
towels and sheets. Momi lives in a state of anxiety because of her fear of losing
Isabel. When Momi confides to Vero that she “doesn’t want to be with anyone but
Isabel”, her feelings are tinged with nascent sexual desire, which will remain
latent throughout the film.
28
Joaquin, Mecha’s youngest child, is introduced as part of a group of boys
chasing their dogs to the titular swamp that borders La Mandragora. They are
guided by the smell and the bawling of a cow stuck in the mud, fated to die a
slow death.
A flash close-up of Joaquin shows his scarred face and injured right eye.
We later learn that he had an accident that permanently damaged his eye and
that he needs plastic surgery. Mecha and Gregorio have waited almost two years
to take him to the plastic surgeon. It is the most glaring example of their general
neglect and apathy. Theirs is a family in decadence. They have stopped taking
care of themselves, their kids and La Mandragora. No one seems concerned
29
about the polluted pool or the upkeep of the house, which have seen better
times. It is at precisely this time, because of the proximity between the images of
Joaquin and the cow, that it dawns on the viewer that Mecha’s family is caught in
their own swamp; an existential, moral one. The allegorical implication is that
perhaps a social class or a whole society is stuck in a kind of morass. Martel’s
films both encourage allegorical readings and resist being contained by them.
Film criticism of her films in Argentina reflects this tension, as illustrated by this
quote from an essay by Luciano Monteagudo:
Mecha trips or collapses in a haze of alcohol. Something besides
broken glass remains on the ground. It would seem that along with
Mecha, whom nobody is fit enough to help out, something else
collapses, maybe a social class or certain notion of a country.
There’s nothing symbolic in The Swamp. Everything has a strange,
disquieting materiality; a sometimes overwhelming physical
presence. Yet you can’t help being aware of a reality larger than the
film itself. The Swamp is capable of rendering visible the profound,
subterranean strains of a society through a group of well-defined
characters.11
In fact, this dense and complex film resists being explained away or contained
by any allegorical reading. It is too reductive, for instance, to say simply that The
Swamp is about the decay of the bourgeoisie. Critics with limited print space are
particularly challenged. The film demands a close, detailed reading like this one
in order to take significant steps towards an insightful and considerable, albeit
less than perfect, understanding of it. Many newspaper reviews of The Swamp
address it rather superficially; others focus only on certain aspects. Stephen
Holden of The New York Times does not even mention Momi, who many regard
as the most important character in a film without a clear protagonist. Writing for
the same daily, B. Ruby Rich correctly points out that it is difficult to convey in
30
writing the film’s considerable achievements and sui generis quality. Then she
proves it by enlisting several references of dubious appropriateness in a failed
effort to describe the film:
You’d have to imagine the family photographs of someone like
Sally Mann mixed with the mother-daughter disintegration in the
classic documentary Grey Gardens; then you’d have to infuse it
with the dynamic energy of Harmony Korine’s Gummo and add a
precise script with the sensibility of David Lynch to have a
proximate idea of Martel’s accomplishments.12
Martel’s filmmaking is characterized by a near total lack of transitional and
establishing shots. The sole exception is a view of a boy getting off a pickup truck
in a busy city street and entering the house where he lives. This unique shot is
the exception that proves the rule. Martel uses it to establish two distinct,
geographically separate locations where the film unfolds. It is significant that the
camera is placed at a lower height than that of a grown person. This is consistent
with Martel’s conception of the camera adopting the visual perspective of a child.
31
It closes a chapter about Mecha’s nuclear family to introduce her cousin Tali, her
husband Rafael, and their four children. A friend of Tali is telling her on the phone
about a recent trip to Bolivia, where she bought school supplies at bargain prices.
The boy who jumped off the bed of the truck is Tali’s son. He walks into the
house with a hare he killed while hunting with Joaquin. He places it on the
kitchen counter. Luciano, the accident-prone youngest boy, is fascinated with the
dead animal. He looks at it closely then climbs onto the counter to wash off the
blood from a cut in his leg. The film jumps from Tali’s apartment in Salta to a
modern one without the transitional shot that would tell us it is located in Buenos
Aires. That is something to be figured out through attentive observation. It comes
as no surprise that the first geographical clue is auditory: sirens in the
32
background. We gradually infer that the young man on the phone with Vero is
Juan, her oldest brother, being told about Mecha’s accident, and that he works
for and lives with a middle-aged woman called Mercedes. Details about
characters and their relationships become manifest in future sequences in a way
that registers as organic and random. One never gets the impression that the
words spoken by the characters have been written down or that they have been
consciously composed with a specific purpose in mind. When Tali and Rafael
drive to La Mandragora to pay a visit to a convalescing Mecha, their casual
conversation reveals that their old friend Mercedes once had an affair with
Gregorio. It is a significant detail that an inattentive viewer might miss. Rafael
warns Tali that they should not discuss adultery in front of the kids. Martel’s
framing of Tali changes from a near-profile medium shot to a near-frontal closeup when she retorts that kids ought to be aware of these things “otherwise history
repeats itself”.
The camera announces the significance of the cross-generational behavioral
patterning alluded by Tali. It develops as a major theme of The Swamp through
the accretion of well-observed details of a world captured and transformed by
Martel’s camera. The significance of any isolated moment in this film rarely
33
registers as particularly important when it appears. It only acquires thematic and
dramatic resonance when that moment is associated with subsequent ones. The
camera’s point of view at any given moment often evokes the presence of a
curious, pre-adolescent attuned sensorially to the world-on-film but yet to form
judgments about it. However the camera’s point of view at any single moment is
not equated to the overall perspective of the film, to the effect of the
accumulation of images and sounds and the way they have been arranged. The
perspective of the film as a whole is, of course, that of Lucrecia Martel as an
adult filmmaker. It is the view of someone who moved away and established
enough distance from her youth and her native region to develop a critical and
analytical perspective on them. However, Martel’s films are driven and facilitated
by her ability to call forth formative memories, by her interior proximity to the
sights, sounds and textures of her provincial past.
As illustrated by Jose’s introduction, there is rarely anything in Martel’s
filmmaking, in its succession of shots, in the placement of the camera, art
direction, dialogue, etc. aimed exclusively at orienting the viewer as to time,
place or person. There are, for instance, no scenes showing Jose leaving his
Buenos Aires apartment or in route to La Mandragora to visit his mother. Instead,
he suddenly appears laying in Mecha’s bed, next to her. However, Martel has no
intention to obfuscate and confuse the viewer. Having clearly established that the
main action unfolds alternately at La Mandragora and in the city center, she
trusts the viewer to remain alert and observant to the narrative shifts from one
locale to the other. There is also no need to absorb every narrative detail or
34
nuance of characterization to feel one has experienced a unique and substantial
film. A single viewing of a film by Lucrecia Martel does not begin to exhaust its
capacity to provide insights into the characters and their world. A single viewing
leaves me with the impression there are more discoveries to be made and the
second and third viewings provide corroboration. Perhaps there are still more
discoveries to be made.
Tali brings Luciano to get stitches at the same clinic where Mecha has been
interned but Mecha cannot talk to her because she is under sedation. Martel cuts
to a TV broadcast about a woman who claims that the Virgin Mary appeared to
her daughter next to their water tank. Momi is at home watching it. Martel
periodically intercuts TV coverage of the crowd that congregates outside the
house where the apparition allegedly took place with scenes set inside La
Mandragora. The TV footage and a number of religious artifacts convey the
influence of Catholicism on this provincial society. However, Momi, who was
introduced to us while praying, is the only character who appears to truly have
faith in God. Martel sustains framings of her next to a picture of Jesus for a
relatively long time. Conversely, every scene set in Mecha’s room shows only the
35
bottom of the picture of the Virgin hanging on the wall behind her bed. The Virgin
is a “headless woman” in every framing in which her alleged apparition is the
topic of conversation between the two mothers.
A parallel has been made between The Swamp and William Faulkner’s
novels. Martel states she “identifies” with Faulkner because the North in
Argentina has similarities with the American Deep South of many Faulkner
novels. Both regions have an agricultural economy and sweltering, muggy
summers. Most importantly, in both regions, status and social class are largely
determined by race. Of all the characters in The Swamp, Joaquin, the boy with
the scarred face, is the most outwardly racist. He expounds on the uncivilized,
animalistic lifestyle of “these kollos” (the Kolla are an indigenous group native of
the provinces of Salta and Jujuy). How they disregard hygiene, sleep “on top of
each other”, and practice bestiality. But it is Joaquin who seems most
comfortable in the woods, where he appears to be perpetually hunting. It is he
who gets reprimanded for lacking table manners and fondling dogs. Joaquin
becomes the clearest exponent of the hypocrisy and racial contempt that
appears to typify Salta’s middle class. The treatment of “Indians” as commodities
36
or objects by other characters in the film is only slightly less malignant. Jose
makes advances towards Isabel at the city’s carnival dance not out of genuine
interest but as a sort of derecho de pernada, the feudal lord’s right to sleep with
peasant women. It is something he does just for kicks. Jose seems to welcome
the wrath of “Perro” (Spanish for dog. Incidentally, there are three kinds of
canines in this film: regular dogs, a human “dog”, and an imaginary, mythical one
that fosters a tragedy), Isabel’s boyfriend, and the two end up in a fight. This race
and class-based privilege is not exercised only by the boys.
The girls go shopping for a shirt for Jose. Momi spots Perro and Isabel
outside the store and points this out to Vero. She asks Momi to fetch Perro so
she can use him as a sort of model or mannequin. Vero gives a roguish look at
her cousin Agustina as Perro enters the store with Momi and Isabel. Perro warns
Vero that Jose is bigger than him but she insists. Perro gazes at Isabel, who
looks annoyed.
Then he peels off his shirt as Isabel looks down and away in wordless
disapproval. Momi plays nervously with the collar of her shirt and then puts it
37
in her mouth. She stares at Perro with the expression of someone aware of her
complicity. Perhaps her motivation is to create a rift between him and Isabel. As
they walk out of the store, Vero smells the shirt Perro tried on, makes a gesture
of disgust, and tosses it away.
It is significant that every time we get a view of Isabel and Perro together, the
shot is preceded by a close-up of Momi, signaling that the camera is adopting her
point of view. The views create a certain ambiguity as to whether Momi regards
Perro simply as someone who could take Isabel away from La Mandragora or
more specifically as a romantic rival. Whether Isabel is a mother figure to Momi,
an object of sexual desire, or a combination of both is debatable. In The Swamp,
38
Martel expresses firm, unequivocal opinions about the provincial middle-class via
close observation of several summer days in the lives of two families. And yet,
she not only trusts viewers to find their way within the world-on-film’s temporal
and spatial dimensions, but creates enough interpretative space so that
characterization becomes a creative process completed by the viewer. The
viewer is expected to achieve a rough equality with the director and the actors
through his or her active engagement with the film.
The most affectively intense relationship in The Swamp is between Momi and
Isabel. Even if one disregards the sensual nature of their behavior towards each
other, there would still remain a subversive, taboo aspect to the emotional
proximity between the two young women. Momi’s parents are ineffectual, her
sister Vero is rather distant, and older brother Jose finds her disgusting. He calls
her “dirty Momi” and not without reason: she goes days without a bath and she’s
the only character who takes a dive in the polluted pool. Perhaps Momi seeks
Isabel almost by default, because of the scarcity of other sources of affection and
affiliation. However, it would be myopic to fail to acknowledge Isabel’s special
qualities. She is a warm, easygoing, caring and attractive young woman. Momi
recognizes those attributes. What remains ambiguous is to what extent she
understands her complex feelings for Isabel.
The Swamp’s most dramatic sequence opens with a two-shot of Tali applying
some talcum to Mecha’s scarred chest.
39
She blames the accident on “these useless kids” leaving towels on the ground
and again accuses Isabel of stealing. A cut to a frontal positioning of the camera
reveals Momi listening in the background.
Martel briefly returns to the first set up so that Momi is out of view when she
joins the conversation. The frontal view is repeated as Momi defiantly defends
Isabel and blames the accident on Mecha being drunk, embarrassing her in front
of Tali. Mecha angrily reprehends her daughter for “hanging around Isabel all
day” and for her greasy hair. She tells Momi to “Shut up!”, and then begs Tali not
to take Momi’s claims seriously. Mecha orders Momi to leave the room and Momi
exits the frame. However, when Martel cuts back to the initial view from a slightly
higher angle, we see Momi lingering in the background next to the door frame. “I
know how this will end”, she interjects. A new shot is introduced at precisely this
40
moment. The camera is now positioned just behind Momi’s left shoulder.
The view reveals that the action is set in Mecha’s room. Momi delivers a most
devastating prognosis: “You’ll never leave your room again, just like
grandmother.” Mecha grabs a pair of magazines from the night table and hurls
them in Momi’s direction: “Get out at once! And if I wanted to lock myself in, I’d
do it!” The view that initiated the sequence is brought back as a more composed
Mecha says: “Let’s go to Bolivia for the weekend, Tali, ok?” They agree to
prepare for the trip. The scene ends when Mecha verbalizes her biggest fear, the
one that Momi has exploited to great effect: “What if I do end up confined to my
room like my mom?”
The sequence identifies Momi has the only member of her family who seems
consciously aware of her family’s atrophy and moral decadence. She is the only
one who challenges Mecha’s tendency to project blame for her difficulties onto
others. It is Momi who warns Mecha of the potential consequences of her
choices and compels Mecha to take responsibility for her own actions. This
theme will recur within the The Swamp with regards to both Momi and Tali.
41
Moreover, personal responsibility and accountability become integral parts of the
moral dilemmas confronting The Holy Girl’s Dr. Jano and the protagonist of The
Headless Woman.
The ghost of Mecha’s mother, who spent “her last 10 or 15 years cooped up
in her room” hovers over La Mandragora. Tali believes children need to be aware
of adult mistakes to avoid repeating their history. However, Mecha’s knowledge
of her mother’s life is no safeguard. She is like that desperate cow stuck in the
mud realizing she has stepped into a swamp and it is possibly too late to
extricate herself.
Jose is having an affair with his father’s former mistress. He also mirrors his
father’s vainglory and callous attitude towards others. He is supposed to return to
Buenos Aires but prolongs his stay for no apparent reason, as if addicted to the
narcotic effects of La Mandragora. Life there adopts a recurrent structure, like a
vicious circle. Time appears to have become compressed into one second
prolonged indefinitely. The Swamp takes place over the course of several days
but it is the digital clock in Mecha’s room, blinking 12:00 because no one cares to
set it, that defines its temporal orientation.
As I stated earlier, The Swamp resists being contained by any allegorical
reading. There are scenes that neither contradict nor conform to the overall
film’s implacable critique of this society, immobilized like the cow in the swamp.
These scenes may hint at solutions, serve as respite from the turmoil, or provide
a contrast. For instance, Mecha’s room becomes a merry place when an
42
impromptu dance is instigated by Jose and Vero. Mecha cannot join because she
is injured but we can hear her hearty laughter before the camera, handheld in
this scene, gives us a view of her experiencing pure delight. At one point, a large
group that includes Isabel, Perro and his friends as well as Momi, Vero and Tali’s
daughter Agustina take an excursion to a nearby dam to play in the water. The
communal fun they have implies that the younger generation could manage to
resolve the chasm created by social class and race. Moreover, we witness a
series of tender exchanges between Tali and Rafael and their younger kids. A
particularly moving scene shows Rafael putting little Luciano to bed. The boy
insists on sleeping with the light on because of the “dog-rat” that spooks him ever
since he heard a tale poolside at Mecha’s. So Rafael decides to lie down next to
him. There are scenes of boys chasing giggling girls with water balloons. The TV
broadcasts the festive Salta carnival. And Mecha sincerely wants to leave La
Mandragora to go to Bolivia with Tali and the children for a few days.
They will not go to Bolivia, or anywhere else. The characters of The Swamp
are like the bourgeois revelers in Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962)
who continuously run into obstacles that keep them confined to their host’s living
43
room. They are trapped by forces they scarcely comprehend. All along, Rafael
has tried to dissuade Tali from taking the trip for one reason or another. The
couple experiences a failure to communicate. Tali wants to go to Bolivia to have
a project of her own, to experience a bit of adventure, and to give her cousin
Mecha a respite from the stifling atmosphere of La Mandragora. This is not what
she tells her husband. She has told Rafael she wants to go because school
supplies are cheaper across the border. Rafael does not understand, apparently,
that there are much more important reasons. He is a good provider and a handson father to their four children but he is not attuned to his wife’s needs. He buys
all the school supplies himself without telling anyone. There is no denying Tali’s
dejection and disappointment when she finds the supplies in the trunk of the
station wagon. She does not even want to touch them. She storms into house
after asking little Mariana and Luciano to unload boxes, which are obviously too
heavy for the children to carry.
All along, Mecha’s worthless marriage to Rafael has stood in contrast to the
apparently functional and supportive relationship between Tali and Rafael. The
44
latter repeatedly pities Mecha for being married to a “no good” guy and wonders
why she has not divorced him. The Swamp reveals that what motivates Rafael’s
protectiveness of Tali is more a need to control her than genuine concern. He
does not consider Tali as an equal partner in their relationship. The symptoms
might be different but Tali’s marriage is likely to devolve into a union not
dissimilar to that of the couple at La Mandragora. Later, Tali is heard trying to
convince herself that it was too dangerous and too expensive to make the trip.
Then she calls Mecha and characterizes Rafael’s purchase of the supplies as an
act of gallantry. “What an extraordinary man you have” Mecha tells Tali. “We’ll go
some other time, no doubt”, she adds. But there is no conviction in Mecha’s tone
of voice. And the small refrigerator she has just bought for her room is a step
closer to her mother’s legendary social isolation; a step closer to a virtual
entombment.
Isabel hesitantly tells Mecha to look for another “girl” because her sister needs
her and she is going to live with her. The young maid looks troubled in our views
of her near The Swamp’s conclusion. Mecha calls her an “ingrate” and hints at
the possibility that she is pregnant, but this is not confirmed. In her Director’s
Statement, Martel explains that unlike “classical narrative”, “there is not any link
between cause and effect in the events affecting Mecha and Tali’s two
families.”13 What I think she means to say is that, in The Swamp, there is not a
clear and single link between events and what makes them happen. There are
signifiers or clues that establish multiple links between cause and effect without
any single one being privileged over the others. The film’s etiology is closer to the
45
complex causation of events in daily life than it is to the simplified and
emphasized causation in most classical and commercial films. I think Martel’s
statement applies to varying degrees to the three features.
Isabel weeps as she packs her belongings. Momi sits on Isabel’s bed looking
at her silently with a mixture of sadness and stunned disbelief. Perhaps she is
shocked that God did not listen to her prayers. Martel shows us Isabel walking
out the backdoor, across the yard to where Perro awaits with his bicycle. Martel
has taught us to associate this sight with Momi’s perspective. There is no need to
show us Momi looking out the window for us to know the camera has adopted
her point of view. This time Martel cuts from Isabel and Perro exiting the frame to
a powerful yet understated shot of Momi grieving privately and quietly in the
shower. The fact that both Momi and Tali internalize their pain does not bode well
for either woman.
The Swamp is bookended by accidents. At the beginning, Mecha falls by the
pool at La Mandragora and, near the end, Luciano falls down in the patio of his
house. We have been witnesses to how a fantastic tale about a vicious “African
46
dog- rat” with two rows of teeth has insinuated itself into the boy’s imagination.
He asks his father if such creatures exist .He is easily startled by noises and
becomes afraid of the dark. At one point, Luciano identifies with the monster. He
has an extra tooth growing in his palate and tells Tali that he is actually growing
“many extra teeth”. Usually though, he associates the fictional animal with the
dog-next-door, which he can hear barking and growling but cannot see. He
worries about the animal possibly breaking through the wall to attack him.
Tali and her children have congregated in her room. Luciano wanders off
alone, hears the dog barking, and walks into the patio. Tali has told the little ones
they are forbidden to climb the ladder but she forgot to put it away. Luciano
climbs up the steps to the top of the ladder, hoping to see the animal. The top
step breaks off and he falls to the concrete floor, presumably to his death.
It is a death foretold. Lucrecia Martel has presaged it all along. We have the
abovementioned shot of Luciano next to the dead hare, and his intense curiosity
about it. There is a scene in which the boys return to the swamp to check on the
cow that got swallowed by the mud. Luciano steps in between the dead cow and
47
his older brother, who has a rifle pointed at it. Then the film cuts to a landscape
shot. We hear the rifle go off, and we wonder if Luciano was injured. In another
instance, Luciano, his sister Mariana and another girl are playing hide ‘n seek.
Luciano gets tagged and the girls excitedly proclaim “you’re dead!”. Luciano
proceeds to lie down on the very same spot in the patio where he will fall. It’s a
pretend death before the actual one.
Rafael believes the trip to Bolivia is dangerous and Tali rationalizes not having
traveled by claiming that perhaps a tragedy was averted. It turns out that
Luciano’s fall would not have happened if he was in route to Bolivia with his
mother. Death is capricious and unpredictable. The line separating life and death
48
is very thin. So is the demarcation between reality and fiction. The pretend death
and the actual death are both shot from a distance, from inside the house. The
difference between the views is that Tali is present during the pretend death, next
to the ladder, and that, when Luciano falls, Martel places the camera even further
back. It is as if she wishes to spare us from such a tragic, unpleasant sight, or at
least show respect by increasing the distance between the camera and the little
boy. Martel does not show us the excruciating pain his family will experience
when they find him. The melodramatic scene will have to be imagined by the
viewer. Instead, she gives us three depopulated indoor shots that register the
absence caused by his passing, the emptiness resulting from his not being there.
A long shot taken from a high angle shows Momi walking towards the pool.
There is a cut to Momi grabbing a lawn chair and dragging it over the floor so she
can sit next to Vero. This action repeats the unpleasant, harsh sound that
49
introduced her parents and their friends. The cross- generational connection is
further emphasized by visual composition: a framing of the two teenagers is the
exact inverse of a shot of their parents lounging next to the pool at the beginning
of the film. Mecha steps into her mother’s shoes by barricading herself inside her
bedroom. Jose shares his father’s shallow vanity and settles for an affair with his
father’s ex-lover. The final shot could be interpreted to signal that Momi, Vero
and their generation are also bound to repeat their parents’ mistakes and adopt
the same noxious behavior patterns. As Tali has said: “beware, because history
repeats itself”.
Tali has come to the realization that something is seriously wrong with her
marriage. She chooses not to confront her husband and to pretend that all is
well. What is to keep her marriage from becoming as worthless as Mecha’s? The
film’s characters are caught in a social and ideological swamp but do not know
what to do to save themselves from sinking further. While driving to La
Mandragora, Tali stated that what is required to lead a good life is knowledge or
awareness. But her awareness of her lack of agency within her marriage does
not make her situation any better. And Mecha’s substantiated fear of self-
50
imposed isolation certainly does not make it any less likely that she will turn into
her mother, so to speak. Tali recognizes the danger posed by the ladder. She
even forbids the kids to climb on it. This does not prevent the accident. Tali
neglects to put away the ladder after using it. The Swamp strikes a cautionary
note. Luciano’s death dramatizes the consequences of the characters’ failure to
be mindful and take action. Knowledge or awareness is truly beneficial only when
it serves as a catalyst for action; only when it serves as the foundation for
change.
Martel explains that something that caused her “much anguish during
adolescence was that (her) life would be a reprise of the lives of other members
of my family. There’s a moment when the similarity with the lives of your elders is
celebrated. But if you don’t see any virtue in that, and you see yourself on that
road, it produces a terrible anguish in you. Probably the film has many elements
of that traumatic provincial life”14. The Swamp is an attempt on the part of its
maker to transcend her family history and heal the damage done by the traumas
of her provincial rearing. Lucrecia Martel did not leave Salta simply so that she
could learn how to make movies. She left for Buenos Aires so she could make
movies that saved her sanity.
The Swamp closing line of dialogue is spoken by Momi: “I went to where the
Virgin appeared”, she tells Vero: “I didn’t see a thing”. This is the note on which
Martel consciously chooses to end her debut feature. The failure of Momi’s
prayers to keep Isabel from leaving and her unproductive visit to where the Virgin
allegedly appeared can be interpreted as an atheist statement. One can argue
51
that Momi “didn’t see a thing” because there was nothing to “see”. One can argue
that the film insinuates that it is just as fanciful to believe that there is a vicious
rat-dog next door who devours humans as it is to believe that there is a Virgin
Mary making appearances and a God who grants the wishes of those who pray
to Him. To a large extent, Momi serves as Martel’s alter-ego. She confides that:
“The fundamental conflict from which I attempted to explain the world to myself
was the moment when I stopped believing in God, after being a very fervent
Catholic. That moment of divine desertion…to feel one is alone in the planet with
other people and there is nothing else.”15 This is precisely the moment
dramatized in that powerful shot of Momi in the center of the frame, weeping
against the wall in the shower stall not simply to grieve Isabel’s parting but also
God’s failure to respond to her prayers. The last-minute visit to the house where
the Virgin allegedly appears only serves to confirm her prior realization that there
is nothing to see.
Perhaps it is easier for lapsed or apostate Catholics to identify strongly with
both Martel and with her Momi. However, I think there is something more
universal at play. Martel’s films are grounded in the specificity of regional culture
while managing to address everyone. Part of the process of human maturation
involves negotiating between the beliefs you are taught as a child and the
subjective criterion you develop to evaluate such teachings. This applies to every
religion and belief system. Perhaps sharing Martel and Momi’s Catholic
upbringing might contribute to the intense sensation that The Swamp is
52
addressing me, personally. And yet, the film’s heartfelt exhortation to be mindful,
self-reliant and responsible should resonate with every human being.
It is debatable whether The Swamp is making an atheist statement. What is
clear is that the film proclaims with certainty and conviction that belief in God
does not offer a solution to the problems-in-living experienced by the characters.
Human beings need to assume control and responsibility over our fates, rather
than expect superhuman forces to make good things happen. That is what I think
Momi learns by film’s end. Suddenly “one holds in one’s hands all the
possibilities.”16 Pain yields to a feeling of empowerment that stems from the
wonderful realization that happiness is something we can build ourselves, brick
by brick.
Chapter Three
The Holy Girl
53
54
I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there
seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times
into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he
seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great
love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so
surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not
wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God.
The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it,
even a large one.17
The opening credits are set against a black background which changes to
aquatic blue when the names of the cast appear. The shade of blue matches that
of the pool where several key scenes of The Holy Girl are set. The cast credits
move slowly and horizontally like bodies floating on water, which will be the film’s
final image. Water, of course, is symbolic of life, nature, the feminine, and fluidity.
The credits are accompanied by an instrumental piece played on the theremin
which segues to the voice of a woman singing a musicalization of Saint Teresa
de Avila’s “Vuestra Soy” (I Am Yours). Here, diegetic sound precedes image in a
manner congruent with Martel’s creative process of devising each scene’s sound
design before its mise-en-scène. Surprisingly, the first image is not of the source
of the voice but a group of girls, an audience. This inversion of the classical order
of action and reaction shots “gives a rich sense of the utter weirdness of
adolescent girlhood, equal parts tenderness and ferocity, innocence just starting
to mingle with experience.”18 That view of the girls appears at the exact moment
when Inés, the leader of their catechism group, sings the line: “Look at the
extreme vileness who sings to you”. The self-loathing in that lyric suggests the
effects of a certain regressive religious culture that promotes disgust of the
human body.
55
Inés struggles to hide her tears as she sings rapturously about surrendering to
God’s commands. Religious ecstasy plays a role in many of the world’s religions.
There is a rich mystic tradition within Catholicism that finds a sensual, even erotic
aspect to the relationship between human beings and God. By means of the
personification trope, the soul is configured as feminine and God as masculine.
This can be readily explored in texts such as the excerpt from Saint Teresa’s
autobiography that opens this chapter and famous art works like Bernini’s The
Ecstasy of St. Teresa. The relevancy of these references becomes even more
evident when we consider that the literal translation of the film’s original title is
“The Girl Saint” and that Teresa de Avila was reportedly very young when she
had experiences like the ones described in her book. She spoke of a “blessing of
tears” to characterize the emotion that Inés appears to show at the start of The
Holy Girl.
Nowadays, the Catholic church seems almost embarrassed about
expressions of religious ecstasy and connections between the spirit and the
body.”The established church makes a big effort to conceal the carnal aspects of
the lives of the saints and mystics apart from stories of laceration or
56
flagellation”19. We are not allowed “to know about mysticism’s powerful
celebration of the body.”20 To an extent, The Holy Girl is an exploration of the
intersection between religious belief and the realm of emerging sexual desire.
The camera increasingly signalizes two of a dozen teenage girls packed tightly
inside the room. Josefina is peculiarly invested in telling her friend Amalia about
being a witness to the heavy petting of the seemingly pious and modest Inés.
The topic of the meeting is how to figure out God’s plan for each of the girls, how
to prepare to hear His calling. One can picture these girls at the site of the
alleged apparition of the Virgin in The Swamp, not at home watching a TV
broadcast of it like the characters of that film.
In the mid 1970s, Lucrecia Martel used to vacation with her parents and six
siblings at the Hotel Termas in the town of Rosario de La Frontera. Most of the
The Holy Girl was shot in this legendary hotel and spa before it underwent major
renovations. Like La Mandragora, the hotel gives the impression of a place stuck
in the past, a place that has lost some of its luster, a decaying place that is a
shadow of its old self. As if to underline this, there is a nameless chambermaid
walking periodically into the rooms where the tale unfolds to spray some kind of
deodorant or insect repellent. A subtextual significance of setting the film
precisely at this hotel would elude most viewers, even many Argentines. The
opulent Hotel Termas was frequented by foreign dignitaries and the political,
artistic, and business elites of Argentina from the 1880s to roughly 1930. During
those years, Argentina was one of the 10 wealthiest nations in the world and a
desirable destination for European immigrants. The lower profile of the hotel
57
relative to its illustrious past and the state of decay and neglect as it appears in
The Holy Girl reflects a similar downturn experienced by the country as a whole.
Male voices filter into the room where the girls have congregated. A group of
otorhinolaryngologists have checked-in for a medical convention being held at
the family-owned hotel. Viewers of The Swamp would not be surprised by the
absence of establishing shots indicating where the girls are meeting relative to
the hotel. At this point, background sounds are the only clue that the girls are in
or very near the hotel. Freddy, one of the owners, guides a handful of doctors to
their rooms. The camera assumes the point of view of Dr. Jano, who looks
through the open window of a room and gazes intently at a woman with her back
to the window. It is a gaze that objectifies this woman, named Helena, and the
first sign of Jano’s attraction for her. In this shot, because the window frame
allows only a partial view of her, Helena looks headless. Jano’s gaze turns
Helena into a fetish. It is important to point out Helena’s own complicity in placing
herself as an object of desire within a traditional patriarchy. She contemplates
herself in the mirror during her first scene, and constantly seeks others’ opinions
about her appearance and worries about how she looks to others. As for Jano,
58
the fragmented views of Helena from his perspective foreshadow a functional
inadequacy within a more holistic and mature sexual intimacy.
In a most subterranean manner, Martel had already introduced the character
of Dr. Jano in The Swamp. There is a little quotidian scene in which Mariana,
Tali’s youngest child, sings a ditty next to a fan to experiment with the way the air
waves distort her voice. It is about the young doctor in the popular 1970s TV
show Medical Center. The dubbed version shown in Spanish-speaking countries
changed the character’s name from Gannon to Jano. The ditty exhorts the young
doctor not to fall in love with a patient. “There was something in those verses that
sparked the imagination (or the memories) of the director.”21
The Holy Girl returns to the catechism group. Inés, emphatically: “What is
important is to be alert to the call from God. He calls us to save and be saved
and that is the only meaning our life should have.” The valid questions the girls
pose such as “what if He asks me to kill, like it happened to Abraham?” frustrate
Inés because she does not know how to answer them. Again, Josefina whispers
rumors about the erotic exploits of Inés to Amalia. Music coming from the street
wafts through an open window. It is played on the theremin, an instrument in
which pitch and tone are determined by the distance between the player’s hands
and two metal rods. Consequently, the instrument does not have to be touched
to produce music.
Meanwhile, Helena learns that her ex-husband Manuel called to share the
news that he and his new wife are expecting twins. Helena seems mildly
59
perturbed and unable to decide whether to call Manuel to congratulate him or
wait for him to call again. She opts not to call. Later on, Helena receives calls
from both Manuel and his new wife but always finds excuses not to take the calls.
The pregnancy of her ex-husband’s new wife is making her lose her head, so to
speak. Nonetheless, the call she has to accept pales in comparison to the
daunting task of the teen girls of recognizing and accepting a call from God.
The sound of a car horn makes Inés smile for the first time, but almost
imperceptibly. It is a decidedly earthly calling. She closes the meeting. Several
girls go into the street to watch the theremin performance. Dr. Jano stands
behind Amalia and molests her by pushing his crotch against her buttocks22.
Amalia remains quiet, perplexed, and unable to react for 25 seconds that feel like
an eternity. She turns around and manages to get a glimpse of Jano as he walks
away. She smiles faintly at Josefina who was standing next to her without
realizing what happened. Later, while lying in bed with Helena, who is her
mother, Amalia recognizes Jano in the medical conference brochure. She does
not tell Helena about it.
60
Like The Swamp, many of the most significant scenes in The Holy Girl occur
in the bedroom or by the pool. Perhaps my favorite scene in the film begins with
views of Helena and Amalia lounging in a sunbathing platform from which one
can look down at the pool. Amalia does precisely that while softly but audibly
reciting prayers. The action and the composition of the shot establish an
affiliation between Amalia and The Swamp’s Momi. In a way, Momi is The
Swamp’s holy girl and Helena is The Holy Girl’s headless woman. The scene
alternates between close-ups of Amalia and shots from her point of view. It is
Jano she gazes at, as he emerges from the pool, puts on a t-shirt and sits on a
deck chair. Martel not only associates Amalia’s interest in Jano with her praying
but also inverts their roles. It is at this point that Amalia transforms from
anonymous molestation victim to a voyeur who, from above, literally preys on
61
(and prays for?) the objectified Jano. The last view of Amalia, who continues to
spy on Jano while praying, is followed by a cut to a closer view of the doctor, with
his back to the camera. When he turns his head to the left, Martel cuts to a shot
of Helena disrobing and getting in the pool wearing a bathing cap. The framings
get tighter as shots of Jano and shots of Helena from his point of view are
alternated. Thus Helena’s allure for Jano is reasserted. We notice that Helena’s
right ear is bothering her and forces her to get out of the pool. The sequence has
a circular structure. A view of Amalia praying and Jano seen from her point of
view are repeated. Then, when Helena returns from the pool, a brief two-shot of
Helena and Amalia is followed by alternate views of them in shot/counter-shot
style. The mother wonders if there is anything more useful that Amalia can do
than memorizing and reciting prayers. Amalia retorts simply that she likes it.
62
Whereas previous scenes show a passive Amalia, this sequence is where her
agency and willfulness are established. It visualizes the film’s predominant erotic
triangle and defines the coordinates of desire. The women get distracted by the
male voices coming from below. The scene ends with a close-up of Amalia’s ear.
It is one of numerous framings in which ears become the focal point. In fact, one
of the salient characteristics of The Holy Girl’s visual style is a preponderance of
close-ups that call attention to the perception of significant stimuli and the special
meaning of certain gestures.
The sense of sight is given a position of prevalence within the world of The
Swamp. In that film, a woman becomes a celebrity based on her vision of the
Virgin, Joaquin loses an eye in an accident and Luciano’s accidental death is
precipitated by his need to see what is behind a high wall. Moreover, faith in God
was symbolized by seeing versus not-seeing. In The Holy Girl, hearing and touch
become the signifying modes of perception.
Helena is awakened, in the middle of the night by a voice calling “mamá,
mamá!” She looks at Amalia, who sleeps next to her, but the voice is coming
from the television. Briefly, Martel incorporates what is being shown on TV, just
like she did in Rey Muerto and The Swamp. As pointed out in the introduction,
several NCA directors do this. I tend to think that it is a rather universal practice
that simply reflects the conspicuousness of the media in people’s public and
private lives nowadays. Helena has fallen asleep while watching a movie on TV.
It is Heroína (1972), a popular movie directed by Raul de la Torre and starring
Graciela Borges, who played Mecha in The Swamp. Besides being a homage, it
63
serves to suggest that something about Helena is off-kilter. Freddy, who turns out
to be Helena’s brother, knocks on the door because he has lost the key to his
room. Helena tells him she was watching a “beautiful movie.” One does not have
to be familiar with Heroína, a harrowing tale about a traumatized, suicidal
woman, to know it does not seem “beautiful.” The brief images shown suffice.
Then Helena neurotically complains about Manuel not calling to announce his
wife’s pregnancy when she knows he has been trying to reach her.
Amalia’s gradual pursuit of Jano advances with a scene that mirrors the street
scene. She was standing in the corner of the elevator when Jano and two other
doctors get inside. Amalia approaches Jano from behind and touches his hand.
He moves his hand away without looking back and exits the elevator. Amalia
walks down the hall to Jano’s room, which is being cleaned. She puts a dab of
his shaving cream on the collar of her blouse and smells it. If it were possible to
make a film that would activate our olfactory sense with the same directness that
cinema engages our sight and hearing, Martel most certainly would. Then we
could truly experience Jano’s shaving cream and the substance being sprayed
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inside the hotel. Amalia’s gesture is reminiscent of The Swamp’s Momi smelling
Isabel’s clothing.
The next morning, Jano talks to his wife on his room phone, sends kisses for
the kids, and discusses with two doctors the closing of the conference with a
dramatization of an ideal patient interview. One doctor mentions the need to
illustrate the “difficulties of interpretation”, meaning the ability to understand the
patient’s description of symptoms in order to diagnose accurately. However, the
importance of the term for the viewer concerns the misreading of behavioral
signs within the intricate web of relational connections between the characters.
For instance, our first impression of the relationship between siblings Helena and
Freddy, who comes into her room in the middle of the night, is that they are
romantically linked. Martel often makes us aware of how we are quick to assess
and judge based on insufficient information by deferring information about
characters and their interrelation. It brings to mind a line spoken by Tracy Lord
(Katherine Hepburn) in The Philadelphia Story: “The time to make up your mind
about people is never.”
We know enough about Jano (Spanish for Janus) at this stage to begin to
consider the implications of his given name. In Roman mythology, Janus is
usually depicted with two faces or heads looking in opposite directions. Jano is
by all appearances a good husband and father, and a doctor who is highly
respected by his peers. Yet he has this other face; he displays a regressive
perversion; an infantile, sexual acting-out.
65
The Holy Girl leaves the hotel environs for the first time with Josefina’s visit to
his grandmother’s house. She finds her cousin Julián napping in their
grandmother’s bed and joins him. They kiss and touch each other. Josefina says
she does not want to have “premarital relations”, then lays on her stomach and
appears to take her jeans off under the covers. The boy gets on top of her and
whispers something in her ear. She tells him not to talk. Josefina’s behavior now
compels us to reconsider her comments about Inés’ alleged sexual activity;
comments that may reveal more about Josefina than about Inés.
Gonzalo Aguilar concludes unambiguously that Inés is “passionately in love
with a man who initiates her into the world of sex” and that it is her “guilt that
makes her cry in the movie’s opening scene”23 While this interpretation is valid, it
is only one of several possible interpretations and it runs counter to the spirit of
Martel’s cinema to present it as the absolute truth, without any qualifications. In
their essay about the film, Eva-Lynn Jagoe and John Cant include three possible
explanations for the tears of Inés: religious emotion (St. Teresa’s “blessing of
tears”), something that worries or disquiets her (like guilt, as interpreted by
Aguilar), and sexual frustration. In support of the latter, they point out that: “We
never see the body of the woman, only her head and shoulders.”24 Inés’ body is
denied to us as if her body was not brought into play. Moreover, the choice of
name for this character implies possession of certain attributes such as piety and
innocence. Inés is the Spanish transliteration of Agnes, from the Greek meaning
pure and virginal. The two predominant Ineses in the Spanish-speaking world are
Agnes of Rome, the patron saint of chastity, and Doña Inés, the character from
66
Juan Zorilla’s iconic play Don Juan Tenorio who maintains her virginity despite
having Don Juan as her fiancée.
There is an insistence and a relish in Josefina’s delivery of her comments
about Inés that imply certain psychological gains, no matter how much or how
little truth there is in them. Do they help assuage any feeling of guilt engendered
by her encounters with Julián? Do they provide vicarious pleasure? Do they help
Josefina rationalize her own behavior? As I indicated in Chapter Two, in Martel’s
films, event etiology and character motivation are presented as a complex web of
possibilities to be sorted out by the viewer. I think it would be wrong to dismiss
Josefina’s faith and devoutness because, for instance, she is distracted during
catechism. We will soon learn she has volunteered to have her beautiful tresses
cut and used for the wig of an effigy of the Virgin. Josefina seems to have
managed to skirt around the Church’s sexual repression but not, as we shall see,
without a bit of trickery and hypocrisy.
Freddy introduces Helena to Jano, who like Martel stayed in the hotel as a
child. The hotel had a regulation pool back then. Jano surprises Helena by
remembering she used to delight the hotel guests by diving from a high platform.
They talk after a medical lecture. In college, Jano knew Freddy, who laments
having dropped out of school and misses his sons, who live in Chile with his exwife. Jano inquires about Helena’s ear problem. She invites him to sit at her table
for dinner. He could meet her daughter then, she says.
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The Holy Girl has a clearer narrative trajectory than The Swamp. Yet there is
a little scene that initially seems gratuitous because it does not serve to forward
the plot. A few girls take a bus out of town for no special reason. They explore
the woods adjacent to the highway. The outdoors does provide a respite from the
enclosed spaces of the rest of the film although nature in Martel’s films is never
picturesque. Moreover, in retrospect, after seeing the complete Salta trilogy, one
realizes that the scene provides a link between the films by recalling The Swamp
and presaging The Headless Woman. The latter opens with a group of kids
playing excitedly near a highway and almost getting run over when they cross to
the other side of the road, just like Amalia, Josefina, and pals in The Holy Girl.
The girls walk into the woods and become agitated at same blast of shotguns
that kicks off The Swamp. Then we see, in the background, two boys hunting. I
wondered if it they were Martin and Joaquin, a bit taller but still waiting to have
that perpetually procrastinated eye operation. There are resonances between the
three films that inspire one to regard them not only as sharing a common
geography and cultural milieu but a whole, unique cosmology. It is the universe
according to Lucrecia Martel.
In the third meeting of the catechism group, Inés attempts to give closure to
the debate by reading a quote that states, among other things, that God’s
mysterious callings utilize all means available to him. The fact that she is reading
from a Church-sanctioned book imbues her with authority. And yet, the words are
inadequate to the task of helping the characters make sense of their experiences
as perceived through the senses. The quote seems to corroborate Amalia’s
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intuition that God wants her to “save” Jano. After sniffing the collar of her blouse
during a visit to Josefina, she tells her: “I think I already have a mission”. Amalia
considers someone with Jano’s perversion with empathy and pity; in her eyes, he
is someone who needs to be “saved.” And María Calle’s eyes are magnificently
expressive and suggestive of a wealth of emotions that the dialogue does not
make explicit25. In the background, we overhear Josefina’s mother talking to a
friend about the maid in terms that recall Mecha’s racist harangues against Isabel
in The Swamp. The girls are seen doing their homework in the foreground. Then
we hear loud noises coming from the patio. Surprisingly, a naked man has fallen
from his second floor balcony. He walks into the living room through the sliding
door. The girls stare in disbelief. Josefina’s younger sister, a girl in the throes of
puberty, is unambiguously shown with her gaze fixed on the man’s genitals26.
When Amalia comes home, she relates the episode to Helena, insisting it is a
miracle that the man was not injured. She does not say anything when Helena
mentions that Jano will be dining at their table the next day.
Helena and Jano dine together but Amalia is absent. There seems to be a
mutual attraction. Jano diagnoses Helena’s malady as tinnitus, a condition that
69
involves the hearing of sounds not having concrete, external provenance. Later,
Helena agrees to play herself in the clinical demonstration being staged as the
closing event of the festival. Jano and colleagues administer an auditory test that
confirms her dysfunction. It is noteworthy that one of the words Helena is told to
repeat is beso (kiss) and that the word she heard is rezo (prayer).27
People congregate in the street to witness another theremin demonstration.
Amalia is near the front with a few friends. She sees Jano joining the spectators.
Amalia walks to the rear, where Jano stands, and positions herself with her back
to him. It is not coincidental that the tune being played is the habanera from
Georges Bizet’s Carmen. The lyrics of the aria, sung by the determined titular
character, include this recurring line: si je t'aime, prends garde à toi! (if I love you,
you’d best beware!). This time, when Jano initiates the frottage, she kindly grabs
his hand. Jano is startled. Amalia turns to look him in the eye as he flees. That
70
night, Amalia opens the door of Jano’s room just to look at him. When she closes
the door, he wakes up perturbed. At the pool, the next morning, she spies on him
and appears to be summoning him by tapping on the metal rings of a plastic
screen. The aural nature of this calling is perfectly congruent with Martel’s
elevation of sound as a conveyor of meaning that is just as important as the
realm of the visual. Jano is made uncomfortable by Amalia’s stalking . He gets
out of the pool and walks to his room. At the door, he catches Amalia tracking
behind him and orders her not to follow him. Unfazed, she goes inside his room.
He grabs something I assume to be money, hands it to her, tells her to catch a
cab, and to never return to the hotel. Of course, Jano does not know Amalia is
Helena’s daughter. He does not even know her name. Jano has been effectively
transformed from predator to prey, from master of the action to subject in
someone else’s project.
At a store, Amalia weeps while being comforted by Josefina, who suggests
consulting Inés. Amalia replies: “You promised you wouldn’t say anything if I told
you. No one needs to know. It’s my mission. I know that.” Josefina promises not
to tell anyone. Amalia believes God has called her to save this clearly tormented,
71
perverse man. Perhaps seducing him is akin to turning the other cheek and
acquiescing to him is a sign of upmost humility and compassion; an expression
of self-sacrificial love. Then again, Martel makes us aware of Amalia’s budding
sexuality. For instance, she is shown masturbating under the covers and, later,
she shares a casual but sensual kiss with Josefina28. When this happens, the
girls are resting on a cot in a corner of the hotel’s laundry room. It is the clearest
example of the collapsing of public and private space observed throughout a film
dealing with a family making a home out of a hotel.
Amalia sincerely wishes to hear God’s calling and to abide by the Church’s
teachings but she is also responding to natural urges, to the undeniable forces of
nature acting upon her body. Her mission constitutes a synthesis of the spiritual
and the corporeal. Amalia’s “profane and anarchic interpretations of the nature of
salvation and vocation threaten the sacred authority of the words” read by Inés
by “creating subversive meanings not programmed by the Church.”29
Helena introduces Amalia to Jano. As expected, he is shocked to learn they
are related. He seems paralyzed but manages to leave without saying anything.
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Helena notices his behavior is odd. Jano receives a call from his wife and tries to
dissuade her from coming to the hotel with their kids as initially planned. It is
Jano whom Amalia summons in the middle of the night to check on Amalia, who
is feverish. The girl is literally lovesick. When he gets close to examine her,
Amalia whispers in his ear: “Sometimes when you sleep you stop breathing for a
few seconds. You could suffocate.” Indeed, Jano is virtually suffocating already.
At breakfast the next morning, Freddy tells Jano and Helena about an
“inconvenience” involving Dr. Vesalio and one of the young women who work for
a laboratory company. The doctor plans to leave the conference. Jano’s selfconsciousness and sense of guilt is such that, even though it is absolutely clear
that the incident does not concern him, he wonders at one point whether it is
himself about whom Freddy is referring. Moreover, Helena also needs
reassurance that the incident involves Dr. Vesalio. She seems to have an
intuition that there is something tormenting Jano.
In the hotel’s kitchen, Helena has a chat with a few women including Mirta, an
older woman who helps her run the hotel and has worked there for decades. All
along, Mirta has been critical of Helena’s flirtations with Jano because he is
married. Mirta is an upholder of a traditional morality that is slowly but inexorably
fading. For instance, she disapproves of her own daughter’s profession as a
physical therapist and masseuse because of the degree of body contact
involved. Helena points out that Jano is acting very strangely. She states she is
losing her desire to appear in the staged demonstration. Mirta opines that Jano is
experiencing a “sentimental conflict” brought out by the imminent arrival of his
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family. Their presence is introduced from Amalia’s point of view. She is in the
pool looking at Jano when a woman sitting next to him, who turns out to be his
wife, caresses his hair. A sad, self-absorbed Amalia casts her eyes downward,
as if signaling Jano’s downfall.
There is a swift cut to Josefina and Julián having sex in their Grandma’s
house. Josefina’s mother and father come in unexpectedly. Josefina manages to
pull up her panties, pull down her skirt and sit on the bed. Josefina’s mother
gasps: “My God! What have you done to Grandma?!” It is unclear whether the
statement implies they have defiled her home by having sex there or whether she
is more concretely referring to the messy condition of the room. The quick-witted
Josefina deflects the situation: “Something horrible happened.” She breaks the
promise she made to her friend when she tells her mother that one of the doctors
at the conference molested Amalia. Josefina’s mother decides she must tell
Helena. It is unclear whether or not Josefina’s parents realize she and Julián
were having sex. It is possible they decide to ignore the obvious because they do
not want to accept it and do not know how to deal with it.
At the hotel, Jano’s wife and kids leave their room to go sightseeing. Jano will
save a front seat for his wife at the conference. The voices of Jano’s kids can still
be heard on the background when Amalia enters his room. He looks at her with a
grave expression. The camera is placed so that we see Jano looking in one
direction towards Amalia while his reflection in the mirror faces the opposite
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direction. He is split in two like the mythical Janus. The splintered Jano, absorbed
in thought, makes himself whole by moving within the frame so that the camera
no longer sees his reflection in the mirror. Then he announces with a calm, clear
voice: “I will tell your mother everything”. Jano’s short physical movement
corresponds to a significant spiritual advancement. Martel finds the appropriate
images to express the psychological growth of the character with elegant
understatement and visual economy.
Amalia sits next to Jano. She whispers something in his ear. Jano sighs and
shakes his head. She puts her head on his shoulders then puts her arms around
his neck and says softly: “You are a good man.” She does not dissuade him from
telling Helena, as one might expect. Jano looks down, furrows his brow, and
shakes his head in disagreement. His breathing is labored. She repeats the
phrase and tries to kiss him. He rebuffs her, and pinches her eye unintentionally.
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She lays down and covers her eyes with her hands. Jano turns to check on her,
clearly concerned. She sits up and opens her eyes. There is a satisfied
expression on her face and a faint smile, as if she has just realized that she has
indeed been instrumental in saving Jano, who is now willing to take responsibility
and be held accountable. Note that Jano has no idea that he is about to be
denounced by Josefina’s mother. His resolution to come clean is genuine. He is
clearly remorseful. Martel insinuates that even someone who behaves as
objectionably as Jano is worthy of compassion and capable of redemption. The
title of the film is not meant to be taken ironically. The healing and rehabilitation
of people like Jano require remarkable, visionary individuals like Amalia. Jagoe
and Cant elaborate as follows:
“Martel proposes that a post-Catholic culture of the body is possible
without an abandonment of notions of solidarity and personal
responsibility. The girl’s progress towards a more humane culture
contrasts with the confusions and sufferings of her parents’
generation, who struggle with the contradictions inherent to their
traditional culture and their authoritarian, irrational, and guilt-ridden
visions of love, sexuality, and eschatology.”30
Jano goes to Helena’s room. He is seen visibly struggling to find the right
words and muster up the courage to say what he came to say. We are aware of
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Helena’s “difficulties of interpretation” so we are not surprised when she
impatiently assumes that what mortifies Jano is his extra-marital passion for her.
Helena kisses him and he responds. He leaves without saying a word. I propose
that Jano is aware that Helena craves the stage, that she needs to indulge her
acting bug, and that Jano merely decides to defer his confession.
Jano’s and Josefina’s family share the lobby. Josefina’s mother tells her:
“Lose the long face. Remember you’re helping her.” Josefina leaves to search for
Amalia. Jano’s daughter overhears a conversation between Mirta and Josefina’s
mother. There is a cut to the conference room, where Jano’s wife and daughter
tell him there is going to be a scandal involving a doctor who molested “the girl
from the hotel.” Jano is summoned backstage to prepare for his entrance. The
speaker introduces Helena and the audience applauds. Backstage, Jano puts on
his white coat. Jano composes himself as he prepares to enter the stage. There
is a cut to Josefina’s parents waiting in the lobby as we hear the applause, which
indicates the dramatization is ready to commence. Josefina’s parents have
arrived too late to prevent Amalia’s triumphant rehabilitation of Jano and
Helena’s moment in the spotlight.
The narrative fuse is suspended just before the fireworks. The scandal never
becomes manifest before our eyes. Perhaps it will not be as devastating as
anticipated. However, it is up to the viewer to imagine how the denouement will
unfold. I find it conceivable that someone like Amalia can forgive Josefina’s
betrayal. I wonder if, just like Momi came to the conclusion that there is no Virgin
to see and that God does not answer her prayers, Amalia will soon figure that
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God is not calling. Or perhaps, Amalia will conclude that it is the Church and its
most righteous members who most grievously misinterpret God’s message.
Jano’s fate is also difficult to predict and highly dependent on how Helena
handles the accusations delivered by Josefina’s mother, a bastion of traditional,
bourgeois culture. Helena, who is favorably predisposed towards Jano, may not
simply take the accusations as fact. Regardless of the outcome, Jano is a better
man now than when he arrived and Amalia knows she played a major role in his
growth. She has come closer the spirit of the Judeo-Christian exhortation to “love
thy neighbor” than anyone else.
The final scene brings us back to the pool, where Amalia is seen in the
background immersed in the warm, blue water and Josefina stands in the
foreground. Amalia smiles broadly, thrilled to see her friend. Her face has never
registered such joy and warmth before. She laughs when Josefina gets into the
pool in her underwear. Josefina declares their sisterhood. The girls float on their
backs, swimming slowly by moving only their lower legs, enjoying each other’s
company and the smell of orange blossoms.
Chapter Four
The Headless Woman
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Lucrecia Martel’s camera struggles to keep up with a boy and his dog running
along the embankment of a country road. The opening shot of The Headless
Woman has two surprises for spectators familiar with her previous films. That it is
a long tracking shot and that it adopts a frame with a 2.35:1 ratio, often called
Cinemascope (or simply ‘Scope). Martel’s first-time use of this widescreen format
is most significant. One of the director’s trademarks is the synchronous
occurrence of more than one action or event. She likes to think of these actions
or events as co-existing “layers” or threads that take center stage alternately.
Sometimes there is a primary locus of attention in the foreground of the frame
with something of lesser importance occurring in the background but, more often
than not, secondary events within the diegesis are primarily expressed by the
use of extra-imaged sound. In The Headless Woman, Martel does not eschew
the use of sound that originates outside of the visual frame. However, the extra
visual space of the Cinemascope frame facilitates, whenever she feels inclined to
do so, the visual representation to two narrative layers within the frame.
The boy we first see is Aldo, and he is playing boisterously with two other
dark-skinned boys near a country road. They chase and hide from each other.
Their potential endangerment is depicted by having a bus speed by as they are
about to cross to the other side of the road in the exact manner as the catechism
girls from The Holy Girl. One of the boys somersaults into a canal that borders
the road and, temporarily, disappears from view. Only in retrospect can the
viewer realize the shot’s foreboding nature. The scene ends with Aldo and his
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German shepherd going away while the other boys climb a roadside
advertisement sign.
There is a typically abrupt cut to a view of a middle-class woman helping
another adjust her false eyelashes31. The women are shown reflected on a car
window. However, this scene is linked to the previous one sonically by the voices
of kids at play heard in the recesses of the sound mix. Subsequent shots make
us aware of a large group of middle-aged women and their kids who are
preparing to return home from a social gathering. There are several overlapping
exchanges with a predominant one about the upcoming inauguration of a new
swimming pool at their social club. It is being built adjacent to a veterinary clinic
where marine turtles are kept, something that one of the women finds
“disgusting”. Another one worries about the turtles drifting into the pool area and
wonders what diseases turtles carry. This may seem like just idle chatter but it is
the kind of detail that accrues significance as the film moves along. The
Headless Woman exposes the insularity and exclusivity of the specific social
class to which these women belong.
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Towards the end of the sequence, the views single out Vero, a tall, warm and
lively woman with newly tinted blond hair. She gets into her car alone. A view
from inside a car of the same curvy road seen in the opening scene is followed
by a profile view of Vero driving as she listens to the innocuous pop song “Solay,
Solay” on the radio. Both views are accompanied by rings of a cellular phone.
The second ring causes Vero to take her eyes off the road to search for the
phone. The camera is fixed on Vero and we hear two loud thuds. The car lunges
as it collides with something and then lunges again as it hits something a second
time. We also hear objects being displaced about the cabin and tires coming to a
stop. Vero catches her breath, reaches for the door handle seemingly intending
to go out to see the damage done, but decides not to do that. Then she picks her
fashion sunglasses off the floor, puts them back on, restarts the engine and
drives away. The 77-second take concludes with a cut to a long shot of a dog32
lying motionless on the road. It reflects the perspective of someone inside the
car, perhaps a child, looking backwards through the rear window.
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Early into an even longer take, at over two minutes perhaps the longest in
Martel’s filmography to date, Vero takes off her glasses to reveal a grave
expression on her face. Her breathing betrays a state of controlled agitation. A bit
farther away, she stops the car and gets out. The camera, placed on the front
passenger seat to get a profile view of Vero, now pivots clockwise slightly. It
shows Vero pacing outside, in and out of the sides of the filmic space, possibly
deliberating what to do. We hear the engines of cars passing by, and the thunder
that preceded the title in The Swamp. Vero’s head is almost always cut off at the
top of the frame. Thick raindrops begin to fall on the windshield. Then she stops
her pacing and stands still. Against a black background accompanied by a few
seconds of ominous silence, the title of the film appears.
The final film of Martel’s Salta trilogy will follow Vero for the remainder of its
duration. All three films are equally ambitious in their thematic resonance and
feature complex, multi-layered plots. However, the narratives of the films
evidence a reduction in the number of leading characters and important
secondary characters. The Swamp has at least three characters, Momi, Mecha
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and Tali, whom one can call protagonists. The Holy Girl feels more concentrated,
not only because most of the action is set in and around a single location, but
also because the number of secondary characters is reduced slightly and one
character, Amalia, emerges as more of a protagonist than anyone else. In The
Headless Woman, there is no doubt that its eponymous character is the
protagonist.
It is raining now and Vero rides in the passenger seat of a car driven by an
unidentified person. The next shot finds her in a hospital. She has a small
bandage on her right temple33. During Vero’s brief hospital visit, we witness the
arrival of a handcuffed female prisoner brought by guards into the hospital to
receive some kind of medical treatment. When Vero is in the bathroom, the
prisoner hides in one of the stalls and refuses to come out. Those well
acquainted with Martel’s oeuvre know that she would not add this scenario
simply as a diversion or a kind of local color. Its significance or resonance will
reveal itself in time. The same applies to the actions of a little girl, who gives Vero
a hug and pulls the side of her mouth to reveal a missing tooth. Vero does not
appear to recognize her.
Vero undergoes a cranium x-ray. The slowness of her movements and the
paucity of her verbal responses indicate she is in shock. In the registration form,
she writes the name embroidered on the nurse’s coat rather than her own. Then
she walks away before signing the form, although the staff recognizes her as the
sister of Dr. Berardo. Again, Vero is riding as a passenger on a vehicle. This time
we figure it is a taxi because we hear the voice of the dispatcher. There is
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another elliptical cut, to a hotel room. Vero takes a nap and goes to the cafeteria.
A man walks in, sees her and asks her: “Vero, what are you doing here at this
hour?” “I wanted a cup of tea” she replies but stays quiet when he asks “What’s
going on?” They go up to her room. When he says he is leaving, she hugs him
and pulls him towards her. Their familiarity with each other gives the impression it
is not the first time they have sex. We do not know the man’s name and how he
is related to Vero, except that they are lovers.
They spend the night together. In the morning, Vero’s phone rings while they
are getting dressed. The ringtone is evocative of the accident. Vero answers but
hangs up when she hears a man’s voice. The ringing of the phone is the first of
many instances in which sounds and images evoke the film’s precipitating event.
The unidentified lover asks Vero whether she wants to be dropped off in front of
the house or at the corner. She just answers: “Ok”. Vero’s husband comes into
the house carrying a dead animal, which reminds us of the dog on the road. He
places a calf atop the kitchen counter precisely like Tali’s son in The Swamp
when he came home from hunting with a dead hare. When he walks into the
foyer and greets her, Vero runs up the steps and locks herself in the bathroom.
He comes after her. Thus The Headless Woman establishes analogical
associations between Vero and the inmate brought to the hospital, and between
her husband and the inmate’s guards. I wondered at this stretch whether Vero
feels like a prisoner within her marriage or, more generally, entrapped within a
larger social system.
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Vero prepares the shower while her husband explains why he arrived late
from hunting. He asks where her car is but gets no answer. Vero gets in the
shower with her clothes on. There is undeniably something comical about Vero’s
daffy behavior. Does she keep her clothes on and the shower curtain open
because she does not want to feel as vulnerable as Psycho’s Marion? Is she so
beside herself that she forgets to undress? Does she cry in the shower like Momi
after Isabel leaves? Is she washing off her lover’s scent? Her husband tries to
coax her into coming out but she is unresponsive to him. Later on, when she
goes to the kitchen to make coffee, the sight of the dead calf perturbs her. As her
husband leaves, the maid answers the phone. She tells Vero that they are
waiting for her at the clinic. Since Vero does not have a car, the maid arranges
for a taxi to pick her up and take her to the “odontological center”. A trace of
recognition crosses Vero’s face when she hears her destination but she looks
puzzled. This is the first leading role for Maria Onetto, who exudes anomie and
betrays an air of mysteriousness. The personal qualities of the actress seem to
have motivated her casting, as revealed by Martel: “I had the feeling that I would
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never get to know her. This was, of course, fascinating to me. Because of this,
we could never be friends.”34 The glaze over Vero’s eyes complicates the
reading of her facial expressions.
The patients waiting to see the dentist at the odontological center and the
receptionist are astonished and bemused when Vero walks in and sits in the
waiting room. She has “lost her head”. She suffers from depersonalization, a
common symptom of acute stress reaction. Vero is a dentist and the little girl who
hugged her at the hospital is likely also her patient. We learn she left her car keys
at the hospital. Vero feels the need to explain her hospital visit, and perhaps her
mental state. She ends up saying that her stomach is upset. Whether her
distress is experienced psychosomatically or she is just providing an excuse is
not clear. Vero’s office manager asks if she wants her brother, also a dentist, to
take her patients but she says no. Later she fails to recognize her car until she
turns on the car’s alarm and does not seem to remember the name of a
daughter, who attends law school out of town. Vero suffers from severe
emotional shock.
The viewer may resist identification with such an opaque, imploded character
as Vero but there is congruence between her mental condition and the viewer’s
disorientation with regards to time, place, and the identity and nature of the
characters. To put it simply, we never know more than what Vero knows and that
is a disquieting place to be. I think this personal insight by critic Amy Taubin
about her reaction at her first viewing of The Headless Woman is probably
common: “My desire to distance myself from the film and its spoiled,
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neurasthenic protagonist obviously paralleled said protagonist’s desire to
disavow a crime she may have committed.”35 The camera may not represent her
point of view but the narrative alignment between protagonist and viewer invites
the latter to identify with Vero. Her lack of agency, her passivity, and her
disavowal incite the viewer to reject that invitation.
Vero goes to the house of her cousin Josefina, where their aunt Lala lives.
There are many relatives at the house, and older women from Lala’s church
group who are there to pray the rosary. The most interesting scene in the
sequence is set in Lala’s room, which is used as a kind of forum because she is
bedridden (and because bedrooms are places where relatives congregate in
Martel’s universe). When the scene opens the frame has been taken over by
Vero’s wedding video, which Lala is watching while providing a running
commentary. An eerie black & white image shows a vertical line between a
young, brunette Vero and her husband Marcos as they exit the church. It is as if
the camera that shot that image was portending a kind of psychic estrangement
between them. At one point, Lala agitatedly hands the remote control to the maid
and asks her to rewind the movie. Lala catches a glimpse of someone at the
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reception she is convinced was already dead at that time. The Headless Woman
is a mystery in that it engages the viewer in a search for clues revolving around
an event but there is also an element of horror or ghost story at play. At one
point, Vero finally speaks. She protests Lala calling someone named Juan
Manuel “effeminate”. It turns out Juan Manuel is Vero’s lover. What is striking is
Lala’s response, that Vero’s voice does not sound like it belongs to her, as if
Vero had been possessed by an alien entity.
Ghostly intimations continue at Vero’s house when a boy comes to the door
asking if they need a car wash. The use of shallow focus causes the boy to
appear like a disembodied spirit. It resonates later when we hear of a boy’s
disappearance. At the moment, it can be read as a visualization of the anonymity
and insubstantiality of the members of the lower class to bourgeois eyes. Next,
Vero, Josefina, and her two sons are on their way to the country club. They need
to drive on “the canal road”. One of the boys throws the other one’s shoe out the
window in jest. Vero steps out and walks in the direction of the shoe. The boy
runs to it. When a car comes around the bend towards the boy, Vero, visibly
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upset, turns around swiftly. It is as if she is reliving aspects of the accident from
the perspective of someone walking down the road.
The next cut takes us to yet another evocation of the accident. At the club,
Vero is among several women walking around the perimeter of a soccer field. At
one point, a strange clashing sound, a thud and a dog’s bark is heard,
immediately followed by a view of a boy lying motionless on the ground. Whereas
The Swamp keeps presaging Luciano’s accidental death, The Headless Woman
incessantly evokes an accident that has already occurred.
It is too much to bear. As if the whole world is conspiring not to let Vero forget
the immorality of not getting out of her car to find out the consequences of her
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negligence. In the bathroom of the club, Vero breaks down and weeps. There is
a worker doing some welding in the room. Vero composes herself and tells him
the water is not running. Then she cries again, puts an arm around the man’s
shoulder and gasps. The man comes back with a tall bottle and pours water on
her hand and neck. Vero exhales loudly, puts her sunglasses on, and says
goodbye. While in a check-out line at the store, Vero matter-of-factly tells
Marcos: “I killed someone on the road”.
They drive by the accident site. Marcos is convinced all she hit was a dog
which is still by the roadside but Vero’s worry is not assuaged. Next morning,
Vero’s brother tells her he will see her patients with emergencies. He is wearing
a camouflage vest as if going into battle. She asks him what she should do. He
tells her to get some rest. Marcos recruits Juan Manuel. When he arrives, we
notice Juan Manuel and Vero are wearing sweaters of the exact same color and
we learn that he is Marcos’ cousin36. Vero tells him: “I killed someone on the
road”. Juan Manuel explains that he has not heard of any deaths on that road.
He says that he would know because the police would have to inform him (he is
a doctor, perhaps he works at the emergency room or the morgue). Vero
explains she did not get out of the car, perhaps regretting not doing so. Marcos
and Juan Manuel examine the front of Vero’s car and the latter conducts phone
inquiries. It is noteworthy that Marcos asks the maid to leave the room and close
the door before these calls are made as if a whole social class is closing ranks to
protect one of its members. It turns out nothing has been reported. The next
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morning, the rain has finally stopped and Vero appears more upbeat and
responsive.
Vero and Josefina drive out of town to a plant nursery. We notice that
Changila, one of the three boys seen in the opening scene, works there. The
man in charge tells them they will have to return for the pots because he is
missing a chango37 to carry them. Vero is again behaving in the carefree,
pleasant manner she displayed before the accident. Her respite soon comes to
an end. On the way back to the city, on the canal road, onlookers and rescue
personnel have congregated. They are told that the water flow in the canal is
obstructed, perhaps by a drowned animal or even a person. Even after they have
passed the site, a preoccupied Vero stares back. At Josefina’s house, aunt Lala
again remarks that Vero’s voice sounds strange and speaks about the spirits of
the dead. “Ignore them, and they go away”, she tells Vero.
At the club, they have finished the pool. There is a scene that perfectly
illustrates how Martel utilizes the widescreen format. Josefina is inside the pool
having a conversation with Vero, who stands outside the pool in the foreground
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of the image. Juan Manuel sits with Marcos on a bench in the background,
somewhat out of focus but clearly recognizable. When a woman walks along the
far side of the pool and hands a cell phone to Juan Manuel, Josefina and Vero
shift their attention to the men. And so does the viewer. Juan Manuel’s gestures
evidence that the call, which we do not hear, is important and that the call is of
interest to Marcos. They walk away, telling the women that they are just going to
have a coffee with a friend. There is too much going on and the distance
between foreground and background action is too long for the shot to work
using the 1.85:1 ratio of the first two films. Martel would be forced to break it
down into several views using a variety of camera setups. The wider frame
facilitates longer takes. The sequence ends with a profile close-up of Vero staring
at them showing she is intrigued by the behavior of the men. None of the frames
in the scene is shot from the point of view of Vero. Again, the angles suggest the
visual perspective of a child.
By the time Vero wakes up the following morning, Marcos has already left in
her car. In her backyard, the gardener finds a buried water structure, perhaps a
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pool or a fountain. She picks up a newspaper brought by the gardener and
becomes absorbed by it.
Later that day at Josefina’s house, Vero’s niece Candita insists on
accompanying her to the nursery even though she is running a high fever.”I’m
bored” she complains, “I want to see where they found the boy that was
murdered”. “He drowned” retorts Vero. During this conversation, Candita makes
an attempt to kiss Vero on the lips. Vero rebuffs her niece’s gesture without
commentary. Candita does not seem troubled or surprised by the rejection. The
moment recalls the sensuality in the scenes between Momi and Isabel in Martel’s
debut and the kiss between Amalia and Josefina in The Holy Girl. The films
regard erotic or sensual affection involving young females as unremarkable.
They also regard minor flirtations and intimacies between relatives as natural and
beyond judgment.
Only a friend of Candita goes with Vero to the nursery. She takes a circuitous
route to avoid driving on the canal road. Vero wants huge clay pots because the
structure buried in her backyard would inhibit the growth of trees planted directly
on the ground. The old guy who owns the nursery has a bad back and cannot
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bring them down from where “that boy” stored them. He promises to have “his
brother Changila” bring the pots down and deliver them the following week.
“What a disgrace for his family”, the man comments, “almost a whole week
looking for him”. The man’s remarks about the damage caused to the community
by the flood is one of several elements which come together to elaborate a
pernicious view of nature. For example, there is the possibility that Aldo died from
drowning in the canal rather than from colliding with a moving vehicle. And Vero’s
most acute dissociative phase is accompanied by constant rain. Additionally,
Josefina expresses a recurrent preoccupation with the pool water being
contaminated. The layering of these details may not coalesce consciously in the
mind of the viewer until he or she reflects after the film has concluded, or during
repeat viewings. The richness of Martel’s films, particularly The Headless
Woman, will not fully manifest itself immediately after one viewing.
A woman asks Candita’s friend, a working class girl despised by Josefina, to
deliver something to Changila’s mother. She lives in a small settlement of
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substandard housing. When they arrive, the camera, stationed inside the new
model car, can only provide a fuzzy view of Candita’s friend giving a comforting
hug to Changila’s mother. The shot conveys the incomplete picture of the poor
had by those in the middle class. Conversely, a girl from the settlement struggles
to give Vero simple directions to the city, suggesting the difficulty of climbing the
social ladder. The rich and the poor interact but they live in different worlds.
Vero stops by the hospital. Her admission record and x-rays cannot be found
in the records room. It is as if she was never there. She goes to the radiology
department, sits where patients await their turn, overhears the same instructions
from the technician she heard before, and opts to leave without talking to anyone
there. Her brother tells her he retrieved all her records, and that there is no
reason to worry. To varying degrees, every Martel film takes gender politics into
consideration. Even though in The Headless Woman the class divide
predominates, it is no coincidence that it is the men in Vero’s life who have the
access to the evidence and the power to conceal it. The secrecy that
characterizes their manipulation of the system contributes to Vero’s
disorientation. Once her inquiries and the men’s admissions make Vero aware of
what is being done for her protection, her attitude towards the cover-up is one of
passive acquiescence.
She is resting the next morning when someone rings the doorbell. When she
gets up to open the door, we notice her head is wrapped in a towel. It is the boy
who washes cars. Vero asks him to unload the plants from the SUV. When she
unwraps the towel, we notice she has tinted her hair brown. She acts generously,
96
offering the boy food, drink, even some clothing to take with him. It is highly
unlikely that Vero will revolt against the system of privilege and disavowal. She
will not own up to the possibility that she is responsible for the death of Aldo.
Nonetheless, her graciousness and magnanimity towards this boy imply a shift in
attitude, even if it is motivated by guilt. In the ongoing process of self-definition,
this new, brunette Vero is more mindful of the humanity of people like Aldo.
There is a cut to a scene set at an elementary school. She gives quick dental
check-ups to the kids. I have a strong impression that this is a public school and
the screenings are free of charge. Vero’s professionalism is a sign of her
recovery. Her head is back on. However, if that is all the sequence is meant to
convey then it would logically unfold at Vero’s office. The contiguity between this
school scene and the preceding one reinforce my view that Vero’s social
consciousness has developed as a consequence of the accident and its
repercussions.
The change in her hair signifies a willful transformation, like that of the
protagonist in Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7 and the Kim Novak character in
Vertigo. Marcos returns from Tucumán in Vero’s car, which has been repaired.
However, Vero points out that there is still some minor but visible damage to the
side of the chassis. The traces of the accident have not been erased completely.
Likewise, the effects of the accident on Vero cannot be undone. A residual effect
lingers. The pick-up truck from the nursery arrives. Aldo has been replaced by a
new boy, who helps Changila carry the pots into the house.
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It is Friday, and family and friends are having a get-together in a meeting
room at the hotel where Vero spent the night of the accident. In the bathroom,
Josefina notices something in Vero’s expression and excuses herself. Then we
realize she is teary-eyed. Josefina seems to know the cause but will not talk
about it. Vero will never be able to completely get over the incident. She will have
a cross to bear, silently and privately. The Headless Woman registers Vero’s
suffering. It is a climactic gesture of empathy and compassion on the part of
Martel towards a protagonist whose deplorable behavior propels the film. When
briefly alone, Vero goes to the reception desk and asks if room 818 was occupied
last weekend. The receptionist indicates the room was vacant all weekend. The
metal keys to the hotel rooms begin to tinkle in the backboard as if trying to say
something. Is this the work of Aldo’s ghost? Will Vero ignore him, like aunt Lala
would recommend, so that it goes away?
The final scene of The Headless Woman concerns this clan’s weekly reunion.
Yet, the camera stays just outside the meeting room’s swinging, glass doors for a
98
long time. It signifies a border between them and the outside world that is not
easy to penetrate. When we go inside, the crowded shots depict Vero’s mingling
elegantly and smoothly. This is where she belongs.
Well, did she hit Aldo causing his death or did the boy fell into the canal for
some other reason and drowned? Where is the omniscient narrator or the tell-all
flashback to give us concrete answers? The Headless Woman gives the
impression of belonging to the mystery genre, but how can it ultimately fit within
that tradition when the mystery is never solved? How can a mystery incorporate
a newspaper with a headline about the precipitating incident and not offer a
close-up so that we can read it? I do not mean to imply that The Headless
Woman is so abstract and reticent that one cannot develop theories about what
99
exactly happened. My point is that the evidence needed to arrive at an
unequivocal solution is repressed because it does not really matter. What is
important is that Vero chooses not to get out and find out what her carelessness
has caused and that the mere possibility that she accidentally killed someone
sets in motion a protective cover-up and a disavowal of responsibility. It is also
significant that there is nothing specific about Vero and her men indicating they
are behaving differently than it is characteristic of their class under these
circumstances. In fact, the actions of the characters are aligned with the concept
of cultural hegemony developed by Antonio Gramsci to show how a social class
exerts dominance over the lower classes in order to maintain the status quo.
The Headless Woman pretends to be a mystery to engage the viewer’s
attention only to deliver a character study and a social exposé. It illustrates and
dramatizes how a social class conspires in order to maintain their grip on wealth
and power and how they exercise their privileges in order to protect their own
and maintain the status quo. The resolution to the mystery is unimportant
because The Headless Woman assumes the perspective of the ruling class for
whom the life of a low-class person, a chango, does not have the same value as
that of a member of the ruling class. For them, boys like Aldo, Changila, and the
one who goes from house to house offering car washes are anonymous and
easily replaceable. They might as well be ghosts. Only his friends utter the boy’s
name. Only Candita’s friend and the man who runs the nursery acknowledge the
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suffering of the family of the dead boy.
Reviews of The Headless Woman often reference Michelangelo Antonioni
and several of his films from the 1960s that use the materials of the mystery
thriller without delivering the payoff. The ironic title of the first one of these,
L’Avventura, seems to take pleasure in “cheating” the audience by not providing
the eventful and exciting movie the title promises. The booing of that film during
its Cannes premiere is legendary. I am sure some viewers also feel cheated by
The Headless Woman. My hope is that the majority will conclude that what they
get in exchange for genre pleasures is something much more meaningful and
enduring. Another valid reason to reference Antonioni in discussions of The
Headless Woman is that some characters played by Monica Vitti in Antonioni
films share certain traits with Vero. The use of this kind of critical shorthand is
useful as far as giving prospective viewers a quick idea of the film in store.
However, I worry about its potential to deny the newcomer her uniqueness and
rob her films of their specificity by placing them into a category.
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What is most specific and most local about The Headless Woman is its
political subtext. I have omitted to mention a crucial detail in the closing scene.
Within the filmography of an auteur who does not utilize music scores and rarely
uses non-diegetic music, it is unique that the social gathering that closes The
Headless Woman is accompanied by Demis Rousseau’s “Mamy Blue”. The use
of this song “at this juncture has the shivery effect of a cold coin pressed to the
nape of the neck.”38 Like the song playing on Vero’s car radio during the
accident, it is a banal, escapist, easy-listening hit tune from the 1970s. The
anachronistic use of these songs in a film set in the present connects this
generation of upper-class men and women with their 1970s counterparts. This
story about a boy who disappears mysteriously evokes the fate of the
desaparecidos, the thousands of young people arrested by the right-wing
dictatorship that governed Argentina in the 1970s. Years later, it was revealed
that they were thrown into the Atlantic ocean from airplanes or buried
clandestinely. Those in the upper class who were not directly implicated in the
conduct of the government chose to enjoy their pleasures and privileges while
turning a blind eye on the atrocities. The potential that Vero threw Aldo in the
canal with her car and the possibility that Vero could have offered assistance to,
perhaps, save his life but chose not to even get out to look , create strong crossgenerational parallels. The finding of something sinister buried in Vero’s
backyard and the anachronistic use of popular music reinforce the impression
that Martel indictment of, basically, her cohorts is particularly piercing. It is not
devoid of compassion, nonetheless. There are no real villains in Martel’s films.
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Witness the empathy with which the camera seems to regard Vero’s troubled,
teary eyed expression in the penultimate scene. This multi-faceted attitude is
perfectly reflected in the following comment by the director:
This woman is going to carry this on her back like a corpse, like a
bag of bones, forever. In Argentina, I see people who still carry the
weight of the really bad stuff that they did not denounce back when
it happened under the dictatorship. And now the same process is
occurring, but it’s in relation to poverty. What we try not to see is
that the entire legal system, health system, and education system
are structured by social class. The same mechanism that we used
in the past to ignore the suffering of others is still very present
today.39
The fact that the films of Lucrecia Martel depict the particularities of life
in Salta, far from the metropolises where her films are exhibited, and that
they are inspired by the director’s formative, subjective memories of living
there during the 1970s and 1980s, do not keep the films from having
contemporary relevance and from addressing themes of universal
importance. Amy Taubin’s final analysis of her evolving, personal reaction
to The Headless Woman over the course of several viewings is illustrative:
If, however, we resist Martel’s invitation to identify, it is not simply
because Vero is an unlikeable character or that we are ignorant of
Argentine society. Rather, it is that we are all, to one degree or
another, headless women. I would not leave a dog or a child to die
alone in the road, but the suffering I turn my back on every day is
beyond measure.40
When I reviewed The Headless Woman last spring on the occasion of
its Miami Film Festival screening, I called it Martel’s “political move.” The
film bracingly lays bare the mechanisms by which the rich exercise their
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political power. And yet, there is such grounding on the specifics of daily
living as perceived subjectively that the film is no less personal and
intimate than The Swamp and The Holy Girl.
The main characters in the films of the Salta trilogy are constantly
engaged in a perpetual and imperfect process of self-definition. Martel’s
sensualist films underscore that the building blocks of cognition is what the
senses perceive. Each film includes examples of the effect of what a
character sees, hears, smells or touches on self-definition and behavior.
They reflect a conceptualization of identity as dynamic and fragmented.
This is quite apparent when applied to adolescent characters like Momi,
Amalia and Josefina, who are living their so-called formative years.
However, it is just as germane to the adult characters. The Swamp’s
Mecha fights against the isolative living that is her mother’s legacy and
Tali aspires to redefine her marital role and establish her agency. The
Holy Girl’s Helena is existentially destabilized by the imminence of her exhusband forming a new family and Dr. Jano is tormented by the need to
integrate contradictory aspects of his personality. The fragility of our
concept of self is forcefully dramatized in The Headless Woman, in which
an accident causes the protagonist to experience a severe dissociative
syndrome. She gradually endeavors to gather identifying fragments of her
past but her resulting sense of self is marked by the trauma she
experiences during the film’s diegesis.
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The Headless Woman reasserts and amplifies the lessons of the
previous two films of the trilogy. It underscores the need to recognize and
acknowledge the full humanity of all others and take responsibility for our
actions and omissions. This humanist perspective is exemplified in the
way the films of the Salta trilogy develop the characterizations of Dr. Jano
and Vero, their most reprehensible protagonists. The Holy Girl’s titular
heroine serves as a model of the most progressive and beneficial reaction
to Jano’s aberrant, anti-social behavior. The Headless Woman pauses
twice to acknowledge Vero’s grief and despair. Additionally, the films
believe in the human capacity for transformation and redemption. Both
Jano and Vero are shown taking steps towards more enlightened
identities.
However, the films of Lucrecia Martel avoid didacticism. The process of
production of meaning can only be achieved with the active participation of
the viewer. The lack of orientation signposts alerts the viewer to this
requirement. Moreover, the films refuse to prognosticate a future for the
characters. There are only hints or suggestions as to whether they will
practice what they have learned during the time of their lives depicted in
the narratives. The suspended endings of the films make it imperative for
them to achieve proper closure in the mind of the viewer.
I hope my thesis has shed light on the formal qualities of the films of
Lucrecia Martel; how they manage to manipulate everyday reality into
strange and beautiful images and sounds. But these are merely the
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means of expression, no matter how masterful their employment. The
basic reason why these works will endure as most excellent examples of
the art of film is because each film in Lucrecia Martel’s Salta trilogy
provides deep insights into the conditions of living in this world as human
beings. Moreover, each film proposes or, rather, suggests prescriptions for
living a better life; ways of being more fully human present within the films
yet needing to be inferred by the spectator. It is a distinct pleasure to call
attention to the Salta trilogy of Lucrecia Martel via this effort to enhance
and increase my understanding and enjoyment of the films, and hopefully
also yours.
REFERENCES
CHAPTER ONE
1
Gowland, María and Avruj, Nicolás, directors. The Making of La Niña
Santa.(Lita Stantic Producciones, 2004).
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
Jones, Kent. “In the Thick of It”. Film Comment. Volume 41, Issue 2.
March/April 2005. 22.
5
Quintín, “From One Generation to Another: Is There a Dividing Line?,
Bernades, et al., New Argentine Cinema (Fipresci, Argentina, 2002) 116.
6
Aguilar, Gonzalo. Other Worlds: New Argentina Cinema. (Palgrave
Macmillan, New York, 2008).84.
7
Maranghello, Cesar. Breve Historia Del Cine Argentino (Barcelona, Laertes
S.A., 2005). 258.
8
Oubiña,David. Estudio Critico sobre La Cienaga (Buenos Aires, Picnic
Editorial, 2007). 66.
9
Oubiña 65.
CHAPTER TWO
10
In their essay “Vibraciones encarnadas en La Niña Santa de Lucrecia
Martel”, Eva-Lynn Jagoe and John Cant use the term “sound from a secondary
diegetic space.” I chose not to adopt the term because I think it is problematic to
characterize any diegetic space in Martel’s films as being secondary.
11
Luciano Monteagudo, “Lucrecia Martel: Whispers at Siesta Time”,
Bernades, et al., New Argentine Cinema (Fipresci, Argentina 2002), 69.
106
107
12
B. Ruby Rich, “Making Argentina Matter Again,” New York Times, 30
September 2001.
13
Martel, Lucrecia. The Swamp DVD. (Homevision Entertainment, 2005)
14
David Oubiña, Estudio Critico sobre La Cienaga (Buenos Aires, Picnic
Editorial, 2007), 57.
15
Garcia, Jorge and Rojas, Eduardo. “Desbordes del Deseo,” (El Amante,
Issue 145, 2004) 13.
16
Ibid.14.
CHAPTER THREE
17
Avila, Teresa de. The Life of Teresa de Avila, 29:17.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/life.viii.xxx.html
18
Jones, Kent. Film Comment. New York: Mar/Apr 2005. Vol. 41, Issue 2. 22.
19
James, Nick. “Carnal Knowledge”, Sight & Sound. Ns15 No.2, 2005.20
20
Ibid.
21
Lerer, Diego. “Lobo Suelto, Cordero Atado”. El Clarín. Buenos Aires,
Argentina. July 17th, 2003. http://www.clarin.com/diario/2003/07/17/c-00811.htm
22
There is a precedent for this transgression in Martel’s filmography. In Rey
Muerto, there is a mention of a TV woman getting pinched while engaged in live
reporting.
23
Aguilar, Gonzalo. Other Worlds: New Argentina Cinema. (Palgrave
Macmillan, New York, 2008).87.
24
Jagoe, Eva-Lynn and Cant, John. “Vibraciones Encarnadas en La Niña Santa
de Lucrecia Martel”.El Cine Argentino de Hoy: Entre el Arte y la Politica.Editorial
Biblos. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2007.180.
25
One would think that that this role would serve as a launching pad to a
substantial acting career for Calle. Yet, after The Holy Girl, she has only
managed to be get substandard work. I wonder if the helmer’s gargantuan
reputation is a hindrance. The performance might be seen as mostly coaxed and
molded by Martel rather than indicative of Calle’s innate talent. Julieta
Zylberberg, who is quite good in the admittedly less challenging role of Josefina,
has suffered the same fate. Until recently that is, when she was cast as the
protagonist of the new film by Diego Lerman (Suddenly, Meanwhile).
108
26
Perhaps it is illustrative of Argentina’s regional differences in terms of social
mores that Martel was not able to cast girls from Salta in the roles of Amalia,
Josefina and her sister. Martel explained that their parents would not allow it, so
she had to cast “porteñas” (girls from the more liberal coastal cities of Buenos
Aires and Mar de Plata).
27
The English subtitles change the word pair to “kiss-hiss” because of the aural
disparity between “kiss” and “prayer” but the thematic subtext is lost.
28
It is Josefina who initiates the kiss. She is often referred by the diminutive of
her name: Jose, a typically male name. I think Martel regards all human beings
as having traditionally masculine and feminine attributes. And that Josefina
exhibits a degree of masculinity. I do not think we are meant to regard this kiss in
relation to the sexual orientation of the girls. Martel probably considers sexuality
and sexual orientation as a very fluid concept, particularly when the subjects are
adolescents. This comment would also apply to The Swamp’s Momi and to The
Headless Woman’s Candita, who appear to desire other female characters.
29
Page, Joanna. “Espacio Privado y Significación Política en el Cine de
Lucrecia Martel”. El Cine Argentino de Hoy: Entre el Arte y la Politica.Editorial
Biblos. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2007.164.
30
Jagoe, Eva-Lynn and Cant, John. “Vibraciones Encarnadas en La Niña Santa
de Lucrecia Martel”.El Cine Argentino de Hoy: Entre el Arte y la Politica.Editorial
Biblos. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2007.170.
CHAPTER FOUR
31
In a recent essay published in Film Comment magazine, Amy Taubin
interprets the shot as a metaphorical indication that The Headless Woman is “a
film about willful blindness.” My more concrete interpretation regarded the shot
as a characterization of these women as a bit shallow and frivolous.
32
That it is a dog that looks exactly like Aldo’s German shepherd is clear to
those who watch the film in a theater or a very large television set. Those viewing
the film on a standard set may have doubts.
33
It is odd because our views confirm that if her head made contact with
anything at all during the accident it would have to be the left side of her head
that did. Indeed, in the scene in the bathroom of the hospital, there are views of
Vero with the bandage only on the left temple and one with the bandage on the
right one. I think it is a continuity error but I am not sure. A few minutes later, in a
hotel cafeteria, she removes the little bandage from her right temple.
34
http://www.thereeler.com/the_blog/a_woman_under_the_influence.php
109
35
Taubin, Amy. “Identification of a Woman”. Film Comment. (July-August
2009).21-22.
36
Martel tends to downplay the significance of relatives sharing beds, flirting,
and even having sex. In her view, this libidinous energy that cannot be contained
by social norms and religious dogma is essentially positive. The almost erotic
affection bestowed on Vero by niece Candita is treated as an afterthought.
37
In the region, the word means boy but it is only applied to young men of
indigenous descent. The Changos are a South American native tribe. The fact
that Martel’s script calls for this word rather than muchacho is clearly meant to
emphasize that the boy is of a different race than these customers. The word is
also used as an adjective meaning “unskilled” or “dumb”, which is indicative of a
racist use of language.
38
Quandt, James. “Art of Fugue”. Artforum. (New York: Summer 2009. Vol. 47,
Iss. 10). 95
39
40
http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/ja09/martel.htm
Taubin, Amy. “Identification of a Woman”. Film Comment. (July-August 2009)