Lucrecia Martel is one of the most transgressor film directors nowadays. Director of only two cult films, she has revolutionised Latin-American auteur cinema with a harsh, sensual and direct language that talks about the social reality of her country, Argentina. This year, 2008 Cannes Festival has selected her third film "La Mujer sin Cabeza" (The woman without head) to compete for the Palme d'Or and the Mostra has chosen her as the protagonist of this retrospective section.

Aranzazu Ezpeleta

Her point of view:

Much has been said about Lucrecia Martel’s films and I don’t usually talk about a film before the audience can watch the work of an artist. I basically think that a film is like an unfinished canvas that talks to each person with each image, without any preconceived idea and with the only freedom each person can take: the freedom made by oneself.
Lucrecia’s films make no concessions on this.

However, I have to admit that I’ve rarely experienced again the feeling of being in front of something extraordinary, in front of an intelligent story with an upsetting and claustrophobic eroticism, brought from the universal provincialism of our soul.

Lucrecia handles many topics as a real master; the sexual awakening, the constant danger of living, the destructive consequences of misunderstood religion, middle-class decline, sexuality from a beautifully open-minded and limitless perspective, feminine fighting intuition… All these topics are included in a narrative universe that, as it comes from that remote provincialism, gives the cinematographic language its biggest universality.

But we are, above all, in front of an intelligent sort of films, with a camera on the alert placed very, very close to the characters, brilliantly capturing each shot and surrounding them in a sound that becomes a perfect and honest soundtrack.

Enjoy it.

La Ciénaga (Argentina, 2001)

Directed and screenplay by: Lucrecia Martel
Production: Ana Aizenberg, Diego Guebel, José María Morales, Marta Parga, Mario Pergolini, Lita Stantic
Actors: Graciela Borges, Mercedes Morán, Juan Cruz Bordeu, Martín Adjemian
Durationn: 102’

In her first feature film, Lucrecia Martel uses raw and direct language to talk about the social reality of her country, Argentina. She paints a portrait of the interaction between two families, one of them rural and the other one urban. Mother of four and married to a husband that dries his hair, Tali lives in the city of La Ciénaga. She goes to her cousin Mecha’s country house to spend the summer near Rey Muerto (Dead King) town, in the country house La Mandrágora (a plant with old esoteric connotations). The boredom of provincial life, the drinks to liven up an infernal summer and the upsetting stillness of a place where nothing happens –but where everything could burst- hide behind all these symbolic images. Caught in a single, threatening place, the characters put up with an oppressive environment where rancor, class prejudice, distrust… emerge.

La niña santa (Argentina, España, Italia, 2004)

Directed and Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel
Producers: Lita Stantic
Executive Producers: Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar, Esther García
Cast: Mercedes Morán, Carlos Belloso, Alejandro Urdapilleta, María Alche, Julieta Zylberberg
Duration: 78’

Amalia lives in a small town in northern Argentina. An otorhinolaryngology conference takes place at the hotel spa where her mother and uncle work. During a street riot a man leans on Amalia in a distracted way but sexually suggestive at the same time. Later, she realizes that he is one is one of the famous attendees of the conference. Amalia spies him and sees that he is seducing her own mother. Immersed in her own adolescent doubts regarding the sense of life, she decides to save the man’s live from perdition. This unknown man’s life is a the edge of destruction…

In her second feature film, Lucrecia Martel handles perfectly the dialogue, suspense, lighting, and once again she shows us a hyper realistic portrait of the cross generation and provincial life of her own country.