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.
