La Ciénaga

Macha and her family are waiting out the stifling Argentinian summer at their country estate, La Mandragore. Macha is wounded in a drunken accident and taken to the gringo doctor in La Cienaga, the swamp town where her cousin Tali and her equally accident prone family live.

The two families converge on La Mandragore and, over the course of the summer rains and carnivals, their members flirt, argue, fight, drink, and sweat, all the while struggling against the omnipresent aura of disease and decay that surround the place.

The Swamp has a minimal plot and nothing much really happens in its 102 minutes. Apocalypse postponed, as it were. Yet, with so much else on offer, this matters little.

Writer-director Lucretia Martel displays a real ability to get under the skin of her characters, their lives dominated by petty snobbery and insecurities where the past seems to offer little guidance for the future, and her observations are brought vividly to life by an accomplished, thoroughly believable cast - many of whom are young.

Using tropes like hand held camera and tight framings, Martel conveys an omnipresent atmosphere of foetid claustrophobia and dread. Though sometimes a bit more restraint perhaps wouldn't have gone amiss, at its best her direction cuts like a scalpel into a pustulent wound. (Pot calling kettle black with regard to restraint here, no?)

The Swamp is a seriously unpleasant, disturbing film, in a positive sense. Well worth seeing, minor reservations aside. Just don't forget to shower afterwards.