Review: Trenque Lauquen (2022) parts 1 and 2
Directed by Laura Citarella; written by Citarella and Laura Paredes
Trenque Lauquen (2022) parts 1 and 2
Directed by Laura Citarella
Written by Laura Citarella and Laura Paredes
Critics have chosen this as one of the best films of the year, and it’s now available for streaming on Apple TV.
There are long films that are clearly great but still strain your patience. Tarkovsky's "Stalker," Antonioni's "L'Aventura," Felini's "Nights of Cabiria" -- they are fantastic, but if you see them in a theater and didn't sleep well the night before, you might find yourself dozing off.
I was a little bit afraid of that before I tackled the Agentinian film "Trenque Lauquen" which, in its two parts (separated, when I saw them at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, by an intermission) totals 4 hours 20 minutes. But halfway through the first hour I was hooked. Yes, it was moving slowly, but there was something about the point of view and the very gentle humor of the first scenes that was beguiling. After a few more scenes I was hooked; by the time the first part ended, I knew I was having the best viewing experience of my year so far, a year when I'd already seen about 15 films in a theater.
The film starts with a mystery of a missing botanist named Laura (Laura Paredes). Her self-centered boyfriend Rafael (Rafael Spregelburd) is also the chair of a university department that is recruiting her; her friend Ezequiel (Ezequiel Pierri) is closer to her age and lives in a provincial town, Trenque Lauquen, where she has been finishing up a sort of post-doc fellowship. In fact, she's finished her project, but instead of returning to Buenos Aires and Rafael, Laura has vanished, abandoning Ezequiel’s car at a remote service station with the cryptic note "Farewell, farewell; I'm leaving, I'm leaving."
As the men search for her, the film is taken over by flashbacks showing Laura’s life in the town, where in addition to her fellowship she has a weekly segment at a local radio show in which she talks about the lives of women in history. In search of material, she goes to the local library and checks out a slew of books. In some of the books she discovers a trove of hidden love letters from an Italian man to a local woman. Forsaking her botany project, she enlists Ezequiel in a search for the identity of the letters' recipient. As they pursue this distraction, they fall a little in love with each other.
Before they can consummate their affection, she vanishes, and the timeline of the story returns to the beginning of the film. Rafael returns to Buenos Aires; Ezequiel goes on looking for her around the town. After months, Laura suddenly appears in Ezequiel’s driveway, asking to borrow his car. She doesn't tell him why, but it has little to do with botany and nothing to do with the love letters. She's stumbled across an even bigger mystery.
So the film uses mysteries to drive the plot, such as it is, but the mysteries are not the reason you stick with the film into hours 3 and 4. By the time the first part ends, you're entranced not by the story but two other aspects. First, the widescreen photography is gorgeous. You see vistas of the rural west of Buenos Aires province -- overgrazed and reforested, muddy, with small towns that are like the closed eyes of a sleeping stranger. Secondly, the relationships between the characters are complex yet subtly signaled, and imbued with both patience and the gentle humor I mentioned above. The film has no comedy; the characters laugh a lot, but only with each other, not with the audience. Somehow this produces an effect of watchful patience in the viewer, like eavesdropping on the people in the next booth at an all-night diner. I felt like I could watch these characters all night long.
So, pastoral landscapes; mysteries; characters who open themselves to the audience. It translates to a wonderful experience of moviegoing and a masterpiece of cinema, a masterpiece that is quiet. This, I found myself thinking, is truly women's art, containing an entirely other point of view that I don't think a male writer-director could ever accomplish.
The film is mainly viewable in the U.S. at festivals or art houses and is not streaming online as of this writing. Update, 24 Dec 2023: Critics have chosed this as one of the best films of the year, and it’s now available for streaming on Apple TV.
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21378968/
Trailer: