You know that expression about incest being a
CinemaSerf
You know that expression about incest being a game for all the family? Well they don’t quite get to that stage here, but they do come pretty close! “Gregorio”…
You know that expression about incest being a game for all the family? Well they don’t quite get to that stage here, but they do come pretty close! “Gregorio” (Martín Adjelmián) and wife “Mecha” (Graciela Borges) are hosting their and their friend's eclectic family at their ramshackle Argentinian country house. With a storm brewing in the near-by highlands, they sit by a pool that could easily be the home of scores of piranha fish, sipping red wine whilst their young son and and his pals play in the woods with a real shotgun and it’s very own ciénaga (swamp). It is hard to tell who might actually be sober, or responsible for the goings on until “Mecha” has an accident and needs to be taken to hospital - via an hydrangea bush. What now ensues is quite a messy and oddly ineffective observation of two families at their most dysfunctionally (ab)normal. There are few boundaries for anyone, hormones are left unfettered, tempers flare and the plot goes precisely nowhere. That’s perhaps my problem with all of this. None of these people are remotely likeable. It is like watching an ensemble of the most selfish and spoilt people auteur Lucrecia Martel could conjure from her imagination and then see them engage in bouts of self-indulgent introspection without any of it having any purpose - for them or us. What we do get, though, is a sense of community from the two families that mingle together - both as bad as the other, but neither actually evil or even slightly aware of the excesses of their behaviour. On that front, the acting plaudits must also be shared with Mercedes Morán (Tali) as the female characters dominate this drama leaving scant dialogue for any of the men and only a soupçon of token eye-candy from Juan Cruz Bordeu’s “Josë” - a man whose relationship with his mother stops only just shy of breast feeding! The production design is really quite effective here with the grubbiness of their settings and their dilapidated motor cars selling us a story of a family whose wealth has dwindled from what it might have once been; of a sense of faux decadence and of a framework for an existence that cannot last for much longer. There is a great deal of dialogue and though there is a little comedy contained therein, for the most part it’s fairly relentless as it vacillates from the melodramatic to the plain dramatic. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood, but I think every film needs at least one role that the viewer can associate with, and this had none at all for me, sorry.
Read full review
★ 8 / 10
A Film With Guts, Or Indiscreet Repulsion Of The Bourgeoisie
Galina_movie_fan
For Christine «Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness» (Billy Joel) A friend who recommended the film La Cienaga, (2001) aka The Swamp, described it…
For Christine
«Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness»
(Billy Joel)
A friend who recommended the film La Cienaga, (2001) aka The Swamp, described it as «a film with guts.» His description proved to be accurate and it most certainly took Lucrecia Martel, first time Argentinian director/writer, guts to make it. Based on memories of her family, and shot entirely in Martel's home town, Salta, in northern Argentina, The Swamp is a confident and skillful piece of filmmaking that draws quite a pessimistic picture of decline and degradation of Argentinian upper-middle class. The atmosphere of indifference and apathy oozes from every square inch of the screen, underlining all facets of the empty existence of the characters in the movie.
Intense and moody, The Swamp is not an easy film to watch, but like the eponymous swamp, it sucks you in and does not let you forget its anti- heroes-the bored, weak, dirty and detestable adults and their offspring of all ages, all of whom are spending their summer vacation in a crumbling country house which has seen better times.
This is not an action film, nor does it have much of a story; however, the Swamp delivers a visceral and direct assault to the senses that transforms the viewer from a distant observer into a reluctant participant in tropical hellish vacation where lives sink into meaningless apathetic drunk stupor to the sound of ice clinking in glasses with red wine and omnipresent image of the dirty and stagnant swimming pool in the background.
While undeniably original, as well as personal and intimate, the film brings to mind the themes and the subjects of famous works of art and literature from different cultures. References to A.P. Chekhov's dramas, The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters, whose main themes are decay of the privileged class and the effect social change has on people, are apparent.
Martel may have been also inspired by Macondo, a fictional town described in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. The similarities in the themes of rise, decline, and inevitable fall of once thriving and successful families are noticeable. But instead of mythical incessant downpour that destroyed the Buendia family home and brought the downfall and disappearance of Macondo from the face of the earth in the Marquez's powerful novel, it is smoldering heat that overpowers everything and everybody in The Swamp. It crawls under the skin, envelops the souls and the minds, and melts away thoughts, desires, and dreams, leaving only decay and hopelessness. The family estate, once a prosperous, imposing, grand building became a run- down house while the owners limply sprawled poolside on their deck chairs, too tired, bored, and inert to care.
You would expect the children and teenagers in the movie, with their natural curiosity, budding sexuality, and lust for life to bring a sense of hope and happiness, a breath of fresh air, but sadly, not in The Swamp. Left to their own devices, they wander aimlessly in the labyrinths of loneliness, as they face their own demons of growing up. It would seem that misery and failure, like contagious diseases, pass down from generation to generation and lurk on the surface of the estate's fetid, filthy, ominous swimming pool.
Read full review
88%
TOMATOMETER
· 48 reviews
78%
AUDIENCE
· 1K ratings
7.0/10
9.8K
•••
jujuju