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Aura Citarella’s film is a leisurely four-hour experience split into two parts, each around two hours in length. It shares the same producer as Mariano Llinás’s renowned 13-and-a-half hour film La Flor. While not quite as long, Trenque Lauquen – named after a city in Buenos Aires province – is still an extensive cinematic experience that can be compared to a domestic epic or a complex puzzle without a solution. It also has elements of a wandering shaggy dog tale, with shades of Borges and AS Byatt’s Possession. Citarella may have also drawn inspiration from Lynch or David Robert Mitchell’s divisive noir film Under the Silver Lake. However, despite its dry wit, I couldn’t fully connect with the film, possibly due to its abrupt shifts in storytelling after the intermission.
Trenque Lauquen is a continuation or progression of Citarella’s prior film, Ostende from 2011. Like Ostende, it features Laura Paredes as Laura, a botanist and occasional host on a local radio station, where she discusses women’s history (no modern podcasts here). Laura has mysteriously vanished from the city of Trenque Lauquen, and two men are on a search for her: her uptight academic boyfriend, Rafa (Rafael Spregelburd), who does not share any scenes with her in the film, and Chicho (Ezequiel Pierri), a stoic and serious married man who was involved in Laura’s project before she disappeared. Rafa has reason to believe that Laura and Chicho were involved in a romantic relationship, which the audience witnesses through scenes shown in an out-of-order fashion but in a present tense format. Rafa’s mission is not only to find Laura, but also to uncover the truth about her possible infidelity.
Laura borrowed Alexandra Kollontai’s Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman from the library for her weekly broadcast. While reading the book, she discovered a love letter hidden within its old pages. She then borrowed other books from the same donor and found more letters that provided evidence of a secret, passionate affair between a local teacher and a married man. The story became even more captivating and emotional because the woman involved disappeared after becoming pregnant. There is also a brief scene in the film where Citarella portrays the woman. As Laura herself has gone missing, it is possible that this affair triggered her breakdown or caused her to become obsessed with uncovering the truth about this woman’s life and her own.
The second half of the movie introduces a new mystery that elevates it to a supernatural level. A strange feral being, resembling a wild child or animal, is discovered in the lake that gives the town its name. The entity’s body is shown in a long, unsettling shot reminiscent of Haneke’s style. Laura has a peculiar interaction with the doctor in charge, who she refers to as a “spectre” due to her mysterious nature. The doctor is pregnant and possibly a reincarnation of the woman from the love affair depicted in letters.
Despite its lengthy runtime, the film ends abruptly before the first plot can reach a satisfactory conclusion. The same can be said for the second plot. Nevertheless, as Citarella’s camera tracks Laura on her unexplained journey through the wilderness, there is something captivating about the expansiveness of her filmmaking style and her refusal to neatly wrap up loose ends. This could potentially lead to the film gaining a cult following.
Source: theguardian.com
