Trenque Lauquen [2022]

 There’s something inherently haunting and melancholic about films, books and songs – Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, Mohiner Ghoraguli’s Sei Fuler Daal, Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart, Chang-dong’s Burning – in which a girl disappears for no discernible reasons and is never found again. Trenque Lauquen – directed by Laura Citarella, who’d produced Llinás staggering masterwork La Flor, and part of the Argentine filmmaking collective El Pampero Cine which Llinás, as well as actress and co-writer Laura Paredes, are also members of – is a bewitching addition to that list. This shape-shifting work – clocking at a staggering 4 ½ hours, cheekily structured in the form of nested flashbacks like Matryoshka dolls, and filled with playful red herrings and tantalizing MacGuffins – both tests and rewards patience. Three investigations were at its core, all of which began in media res and faded off enigmatically. The search for Laura (Laura Paredes) – botanist, amateur historian, part-time radio jockey – by her older boyfriend Rafael (Rafael Spregelburd), and Ezequiel (Ezequiel Pierri), with whom she’d developed an intimate friendship, upon her sudden disappearance, formed this episodic yarn’s central focus. Two curious quests that Laura was drawn into before she fell off the grid, were thereafter chronicled through intricate flashbacks. The first one involved piecing together a racy, intercontinental, epistolary affair; the way she locates old letters using teasing clues reminded me a lot of the gorgeous novel The Tango Singer – another sublime Borgesian work – where the narrator hopes to locate an obscure, evasive tango singer. The second one featured a strange woman (Verónica Llinás) who’s trying to find a rare flower and potentially hiding a fantastical boy. The futile quest for answers, therefore, formed an alluring motif in this delightful postmodernist opus.

Director: Laura Citarella

Genre: Drama/Mystery

Language: Spanish

Country: Argentina