trenque lauquen (w&d citarella, w. laura paredes)

There’s a monster in Trenque, which the protagonist, Laura wants to see. She’s told she can’t see it, but she can listen to it. She strains at the door to hear, and what she hears, along with us, is the sound of the monster breathing. Which seems wholly appropriate for a film which relishes its capacity to breathe. Rather than being measured in minutes or story beats, it might be measure in breaths, the breaths the characters take as they try to work out what’s happening, and we take alongside them.

Trenque Lauquen has garnered critical plaudits and global recognition for Citarella. Its genesis as part of the Pampero stable is evident, with Llinas credited as a collaborator. At nearly five hours long, it is in the vein of Historias Minimas and La Flor, films where the director worked as a producer. All of which goes some way to explain the surefooted way her magnum opus handles the challenge of filling so much screen time so artfully. It’s almost as though a parallel version of cinema has been quietly evolving in the province of Buenos Aires, one which has no fear of taxing the audience’s attention span, something which is such a concern in other parts of the world. Because Trenque isn’t just long, it also revels in its longeurs, even down to the modes of dialogue, where the Pinteresque pause is employed to full and touching effect.

The film is divided into twelve parts, each of which has its own distinctive flavour, sometimes, as in Spregelburd’s part, defined by the acting, and sometimes defined by the mood. In her talk following the screening of Ostende, a film she said was shaped as a mash-up between Rohmer and Hitchcock, the director said that Trenque is a conversation with at least eight directors. Hitchcock might be there again, along with Antonioni, using the trope of the lady who vanishes, and the end felt as though it might be a nod to Varda’s Vagabonde. The multiplicity of influences and tones, another thing that more conventional filmmaking tends to be wary of, actually helps to define the aesthetic of Trenque Lauquen: it is many things at once, always predicated on a mystery. The mystery of the poetess, the mystery of the creature, the mystery of the missing protagonist. These hooks are enough to constantly engage the audience, and maintain the film’s rhythm: we’re not that bothered how long it takes, in fact, the drawn out nature of the quest if anything adds to our enjoyment. This is cinema operating like a sprawling novel, where the detours and distractions are part of the pleasure.