Director: Lucrecia Martel
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 3.5
Or: Jodorowsky on mood stabilizers. Stationed in Paraguay, Spanish official/"corregidor" Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) waits (... and waits ...) for his transfer to Buenos Aires while dealing with the soul-crushing minutiae of everyday life (and absurd "policies") ... oh, and there's a criminal named Vicuña Porto (Matheus Nachtergaele) that everyone's talking about. Martel, working from the novel by Antonio di Benedetto, takes an altogether surreal approach to the material - she's never been one to stick to a straightforward storyline, so it unfolds like a dark, surreal dream, jumping around in time and shifting from one location to the next without much (if any) explanation (you can also expect to hear strange sounds emanating out of nowhere). It's a giant swipe at colonialism, but it's also a statement about feeling trapped in a stagnant environment and how every little thing becomes an annoyance ... and how those start to work on a person's emotional state. Many will most likely be put off by the cryptic nature of it, but you have to just let wash over you (it helps that Rui Poças' cinematography is astounding - watch out for the "locals" in red war paint!).
