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Aura Citarella’s latest film has a relaxed pace that spans over four hours, divided into two parts of approximately two hours each. Interestingly enough, it shares the same producer as Mariano Llinás’s renowned 13-and-a-half hour masterpiece, La Flor. In comparison, Trenque Lauquen – named after a city in Buenos Aires province and meaning “round lake” – can be seen as a cinematic haiku. However, it is still a grand domestic saga, an intricate puzzle, a perplexing mystery with no clear solution, and a meandering anecdote with hints of Borges or AS Byatt’s Possession. It seems that Citarella has incorporated influences from Lynch and even David Robert Mitchell’s polarizing noir, Under the Silver Lake. Despite its dry wit and charm, there was something about the film that I couldn’t quite connect with or fully engage in. Perhaps it was the sudden jumps between bizarre stories after the intermission, almost like jumping the shark.
Trenque Lauquen is a continuation, or progression, of Citarella’s previous film Ostende from 2011. It features Laura Paredes as Laura, a botanist and occasional presenter on women’s history at a local radio station (no modern podcasts here). Alarmingly, Laura has disappeared from the city of the same name, and two men are on a search for her. One is her rigid academic boyfriend Rafa (played by Rafael Spregelburd), who strangely never has a scene with Laura in the film. The other is stoic, serious married man Chicho (played by Ezequiel Pierri), who was involved in Laura’s project before she went missing. Rafa suspects, with good reason, that Laura and Chicho were in a romantic relationship, which the audience witnesses through disjointed scenes in the present tense. Rafa’s mission is not only to find her, but also to uncover the truth about Laura’s possible affair.
Laura borrowed a book from the library for her broadcast and found a love letter hidden in its pages. By borrowing more books from the same person, she discovered evidence of a secret affair between a local teacher and a married man. The woman involved disappeared after becoming pregnant, making the letters even more emotionally charged. There is also a scene in the film where Citarella plays the woman. Since Laura has also disappeared, it is possible that this affair has affected her mental state or led her to delve into the woman’s story and her own.
The second half of the movie introduces a new mystery that elevates it to a supernatural level. This involves the discovery of a strange feral being, possibly a wild child or animal, in the lake that gives the town its name. The entity’s body is seen on the edge of the water in a long, unsettling shot reminiscent of Haneke’s style. Laura has a strange encounter with the doctor who is handling the situation, a woman who exudes an air of mystery and is referred to as a “spectre” by Laura. This doctor is pregnant and could potentially be a reincarnation of the woman from the love letters.
Despite its long duration, the film abruptly ends before the first story reaches a fulfilling conclusion. This pattern repeats in the second story as well. However, as Citarella’s camera captures Laura’s mysterious journey into the wilderness, there is a captivating quality to her cinematic style and her deliberate avoidance of neatly resolving any loose ends. The film has potential to become a cult classic.
Source: theguardian.com
