Families, Owners, Servants and Siblings in La ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001)

DAVID OUBIÑA

Despite All Adversities. Spanish-American Queer Cinema

State University of New York Press (SUNY)

Lugar: Albany, New York; Año: 2015; p. 237 - 246

The Swamp (Lucrecia Martel, 2001) does not allow for a protagonist character or a central line of narration. Instead, the story unfolds according to a drift or flow. It progresses in a diffuse manner without knowing in which direction it is heading. It is based on an associative and recursive model. There is no development, no continuity, and no alternation. The effect is of promiscuity and contamination. Martel makes no effort to distinguish the characters: at first sight it is difficult to identify them and to establish the links between them. Nevertheless, that confusion is not due to a sparse elaboration of their personal qualities since, although they intermingle, each one conserves his or her singularity. In any case, the film works with this light but abrupt disparity between similarity and difference. The characters belong to different classes, different generations, and different families; although that may not prevent them from permanently mixing, the juxtaposition does not suppose that there is anything to share either. Their relationships oscillate between small differences blown out of proportion to mark distance and a tight knit closeness that, by accentuating itself, does nothing but show incompatibility.