La Cienaga is not an easy film to watch. Lucretia Martel's first full-length film is deeply steeped in dark Chekhovian ambiance and emerges as a slow-moving but tense study of a family's collapse.

While parents Mecha and Gregorio isolate and insulate themselves against the world with alcohol, their children attempt in their various ways to escape the entanglement of their family's legacy.

Joaquin, the youngest son who has lost an eye in an unspecified accident (Mecha comments to her sister, Tali, that the doctors recommended that that he have surgery two years after the accident, and Tali reminds her that the accident was four years earlier--time slips by Mecha, measured as it is with bottles of wine and the constant need for more ice) has become half-feral. He's off in the mountains, shooting animals and roaming with a band of equally scarred children. As they wander through the mountains, they come across a cow stuck in deep mud. The children are all fascinated by the cow's struggles to free itself and watch it quietly from the bank. Later, the children return to look at the cow after it is dead and rotting in the mud. La Cienaga translates as "the swamp," and it is not hard to see that these scarred and unwatched children are like the cow, struggling to free themselves from the less-than-solid ground upon which their lives are built.

The oldest son, Jose, is having an affair with his father's old mistress, Mercedes . . . but also seems to have strangely sexualized relationship with both his sister and his mother, with dark hints of a relationship with servant Isabel to boot. While it is true that most of the members of this family lie around in bed a great deal of the time, Jose's presence is sexualized as he's shown in bed with Mercedes and immediately afterwards in bed with his mother. His relationship with his sister is also sexually charged as they play innocent games of chase and wrestle followed by his stepping into her shower to wash off a muddied leg as she bathes. She also undresses Jose and curls up beside him in bed after he returns drunk and bloodied from Carnival. Jose uses the strength of his sexuality to cut through the mire of his family's collapse. The problem is, his sexuality is directed inward, toward his family instead of outward, which might allow him to escape his family's fate. His relationship with Mercedes follows his father's affair with Mercedes, and even the hints about a relationship with Isabel (he searches for her to dance at Carnival and is beaten up by the man who seems to care about Isabel) is complicated by Momi's love for Isabel.

Momi, the oldest daughter, lies in bed giving thanks to God for having given her Isabel. Isabel, despite her being about Momi's age, is the only truly stable influence in the household. And Momi, desperate for order, depends upon and places all her affection on Isabel. This relationship seems to have no boundries, as Momi refuses to place class distinctions between them or to define her affections under any one kind of love. Still, Momi seems like the best hope for action from this family (she and Isabel resolve the crisis of Mecha's fall on the patio), but just like the murky pool in which she swims every day, Momi's life is structured around the decay of the family; she doesn't notice that the water is too dirty to swim in, and she doesn't see the ways in which she repeats her mother's mistakes adding to the slow ruin of the family. Once Isabel leaves, we do not sense a great deal of hope for Momi. In fact, the scene which ends the film is Momi repeating the actions which opened the film--dragging the lawn chair across the patio to lie by the pool. Mecha, Gregorio and their friends performed the action in a drunken stupor. Momi simply repeats the action mindlessly.

Each of the other characters plays a part in this family's drama of decline. Gregorio is so far gone that the extent of his introspection seems to be watching himself in the mirror as he slowly grooms. Mecha, in a moment of clarity, muses about whether she soon will take to her bed for good as her mother did. And Tali, bearing the burden of the sister who escaped the family destiny, suffers the excruciating guilt of her failure to take Mecha to Bolivia to go shopping for school supplies. The trip seems to Tali to be the only touchstone left for Mecha with the real world, and when Tali's husband buys their children's school supplies making the trip unnecessary, Tali feels guilty and grief-stricken. As the film ends with a tragedy befalling Tali's family, we are left unsure that Tali really will be able to escape the family's destiny.

While it's hard to call La Cienaga an enjoyable film, the characters are strongly realized and fascinating. And just as the children are drawn to the struggles of the dying cow and then back to the corpse, we are drawn into this family's slow but terribly inevitable demise.

Recommended: Yes