Between Breakup and Tradition (The New Argentine Cinema from the '90s)

DAVID OUBIÑA

Senses of Cinema

Senses of Cinema

Lugar: Melbourne; Año: 2004 p. 10 - 17

1443-4059

After the political instability and hyperinflation during Raúl Alfonsin´s government, his successor, president Carlos Menem, declared that Argentina would belong to the first world. On the surface, a neo-liberal system was imposed along with the withdrawal of State intervention in free market forces. However, under the cover of a fictitious modernisation, Menem destroyed the productive apparatus, ruined traditional businesses, increased unemployment and deepened levels of poverty. These problems are not usually the explicit subject of the new films. In comparison with the strong connection between cinema and politics during the ´70s and the opportunistic use of politics in the films of the ´80s, the new cinema of the ´90s seems less committed. But even when they don´t explicitly deal with military repression or the social and economic terror during democratic reconstruction, the new filmmakers have not given up on showing the consequences of these things. If politics are not in the forefront as a theme or as a conflict, that´s because they pervade all personal relationships: an omnipresence of the political that extends across (and produces) habits and forms of behaviour. In this sense, the characters of these films are privileged sensors, making it possible to understand the relationship between the forces of a perverse socio-economic system. I want to analyse these aspects as they are expressed in two very different but equally emblematic films of the new cinema: Martín Rejtman´s Silvia Prieto and Lucrecia Martel´s La ciénaga. The background of Silvia Prieto is the savage capitalism of the market economy while in La ciénaga it is the decrepit world of traditional rural economies. But the critical intention of both films is determined by the way politics inform narrative mechanisms and define the portrayal of behaviour.