THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” − MASTERPIECE
Something is in the process of being invented in Buenos Aires which could well change the face of world auteur cinema, confronted almost everywhere with the same downward trend in its funding. This good news is called El Pampero Cine, a group of filmmakers friends, active since 2002, which, by pooling the production of films (about twenty in twenty years), has managed to bring down production costs, and thus to protect against any dependence on the usual, industrial or state counters.
Here, economic decline has resulted in an unprecedented unleashing of artistic energies, including the exuberant The Flower by Mariano Llinas, a narrative whirlwind in six episodes and 814 minutes, released in March 2019, provided the ultimate proof. The taste for stories, the way of telling them, their labyrinthine detours and the propensity to get lost in them, as well as to find oneself there, constitute the common obsession of the associated filmmakers, perpetuating a literary tradition of works-worlds such The thousand and One Nights, The Manuscript found in Zaragoza of Jan Potocki or, more locally, the Fiction Borgesian.
Proof once again Trenque-Lauquen, the collective’s second breakthrough on French screens, the second solo feature film by its co-founder, Laura Citarella (in addition to two co-productions), a film in two parts (over two hours each) and 12 chapters, with an incredible romantic abundance. Under this enigmatic title, to be said like a magic formula, hides a small town in the province of Portègne, 445 kilometers west of the capital, a kind of quiet and characterless town, whose name in the Mapuche language designates the ” round lake” which adorns its perimeter, and which will take the place, precisely, of a reservoir of fiction, potentially inexhaustible.
Embedded Narratives
The premise is simple: a woman has disappeared (as in Adventure by Michelangelo Antonioni – 1960 –, major influence), and it is around his absence that the film weaves its web, reconvening it by way of memories and enshrined stories, recorded traces and conceded confessions. Laura (actress Laura Paredes, already seen in The Flowerhere co-author of the screenplay and reincarnation of another illustrious absentee, the Laura d’Otto Preminger), botanical researcher, author of a weekly radio column, is missing, and two men are following her trail.
One, Rafa (Rafael Spregelburd), her official, wealthy partner, with whom she was to buy a house. The other, Ezequiel (Ezequiel Pierri), town hall employee with false airs of red-haired Droopy, his confidant who has become his secret lover. Spinning around the area, confronting their stories with those of the inhabitants, they work to reconstruct Laura’s last days. But a story can hide others, drawing a nested suite where the traces of the volatilized dissipate, blur.
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