La Ciénaga Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

La Ciénaga Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov January 20, 2015

Winner of Alfred Bauer Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, Lucrecia Martel's "La Ciénaga" a.k.a. The Swamp" (2001) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion. The supplemental features on the disc include an original trailer for the film; exclusive new video interview with director, writer, and Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema cofounder Andres Di Tella; and new video program with the Argentinean director. The release also arrives with an illustrated leaflet featuring professor David Oubitia's essay "What's Outside the Frame". In Spanish, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

I am coming home

The men and women around the dirty pool have been drinking for hours. They have tried talking, but the hot and humid weather has quickly exhausted them and now they are silent. A few can barely breathe.

While trying to move some empty glasses, the hostess, Mecha (Graciela Borges, Brother and Sister), falls and seriously cuts her body. The guests remain indifferent while Mecha’s husband, Gregorio (Martin Adejmian, Inheritance), pours himself another glass of wine and casually walks away. Only the children react -- as normal human beings should -- and help her get to a nearby hospital.

Somewhere up in the hills, Joaquin (Diego Baenas), Mecha and Gregorio’s youngest son, is hunting with a group of friends. He is still a kid, but he has a loaded rifle and is eager to use it.

In the nearby town, La Cienaga, Mecha’s cousin, Tali (Mercedes Moran, The Motorcycle Diaries), her husband, Rafael (Daniel Valenzuela, La Leon), and their four children live in a small house without a pool. Unlike Mecha and Gregorio, Tali and Rafael constantly talk, help each other and make plans for the future. They barely make ends meet, but their lives seem far more fulfilling.

Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel’s La Cienaga is a moody and chaotic film full of unusual contrasts. It tells a story, but the chronology of the events in it and the different conflicts are largely unimportant. The focus of attention here is on the ambience and the different attitudes that are linked to it.

There are no traditional central characters and the majority of the relationships remain vague. The camera routinely observes Mecha, but she is treated like a litmus paper -- when she appears, she exposes qualities in the people around her that would have been impossible to recognize without her alcohol-fueled outbursts.

The dynamics in the bigger picture are even more fascinating. The line that separates the haves (Mecha and Gregorio’s family) and have-nots (the Indians/the servants) is obvious, but their attitudes towards sex, death, and religion are virtually the same. It is the film's key point: Class differences remains, but the country’s troubled political and economic past has had a profound and disastrous impact on everyone.

Martel is one of the most prominent figures in the New Argentine Cinema that emerged during the mid-‘90s. Her style is very unique, though the non-linear structure of the narrative in some of her films frequently reminds of Jean-Luc Godard’s post-Nouvelle Vague films. On the other hand, the ambience and to a certain extent the use of sound and language in Martel’s films are quite similar to those observed in the work of French director Claire Denis.

La Ciénaga was Martel’s first feature film. It was shot in her native town of Salta, a city in Northwestern Argentina, with rich Inca and colonial history where a variety of different dialects are spoken.

In addition to La Ciénaga, Martel's credits include the internationally acclaimed The Holy Girl a.k.a. La nina santa (2004) and The Headless Woman a.k.a. La mujer sin cabeza (2008).

La Ciénaga Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Lucrecia Martel's La Ciénaga arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion.

The following text appears inside the leaflet provided with this Blu-ray release:

"Approved by director Lucrecia Martel, this new digital transfer was created in 4K resolution on a Scanity film scanner from the original cut camera negative. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, warps, jitter, and flicker were manually removed using MTI's DRS and Pixel Farm's PFClean, while Digital Vision's Phoenix was used for small dirt, grain, and noise reduction.

Transfer supervisor: Lee Kline.
Colorist: Sheri Eisenberg/Colorworks, Culver City, CA."

The high-definition transfer is outstanding. Despite the fact that the camera constantly moves and there are parts of the film where light is restricted, detail and clarity are excellent. Image depth is equally impressive, and the larger your screen is, the easier it will be for you to appreciate the all-around beautifully balanced presentation. Colors are very rich, stable, and natural. There are absolutely no traces of problematic degraining or sharpening adjustments. Image stability is excellent. Also, there are no encoding or compression anomalies to report in this review. To sum it all up, this truly is a fantastic technical presentation of La Ciénaga which in my opinion is every bit as satisfying as Criterion's recent presentations of Todd Haynes' Safe and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

La Ciénaga Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. For the record, Criterion have provided optional English subtitles for the main feature.

The film does not have a prominent music score or elaborate special effects. However, there is an excellent range of nuanced dynamics and clarity and depth are outstanding. What also impresses is how well defined seemingly random sounds and noises are, such as distant rifle shots and voices. From start to finish the dialog is exceptionally crisp, stable, and very easy to follow. Finally, there are absolutely no pops, cracks, audio dropouts, or digital distortions to report in this review. The English translation is excellent.

La Ciénaga Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Lucrecia Martel - in this video program, director Lucrecia Martel explains how her relationship with religion evolved while growing up, and discusses the lasting impact her grandmother's horror stories had on her, the unusual structure of La Ciénaga and the film's ability to submerge its audience into a different reality/state of mind, the sound events in it, etc. The program was produced exclusively for Criterion in the fall of 2014. In Spanish and Portuguese, with optional English subtitles. (19 min, 1080p).

• Andres Di Tella - in this video interview, director, writer, and Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema cofounder Andres Di Tella discusses Lucrecia Martel's directing style, some of the recurring themes in her films, the key difference between the New Argentine Cinema (which emerge during the early '90s) and the films from the desaparecidos (the military dictatorship era), the use of language in La Ciénaga, the massive script for the film, etc. The interview was conducted exclusively for Criterion in April 2014. In English, not subtitled. (24 min, 1080p).

• Trailer - original trailer for La Ciénaga. In Spanish, with optional English subtitles. (2 min, 1080i).

• Leaflet - illustrated leaflet featuring David Oubitia's essay "What's Outside the Frame". (The author is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, the Universidad del Cine, and New York University. His books include Estudio critico sobre "La Ciénaga" and El silencio y sus bordes: Modos de lo extremo en la literatura y el cine).

La Ciénaga Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Lucrecia Martel's directorial debut, La Ciénaga, offers a strikingly bold dissection of the odd contrasts and similarities that emerged between the haves and have-nots in her native Argentina after the military dictatorship era. It takes some time to get used to the unusual narrative, but the film is a minor masterpiece which I feel will remain relevant for years to come. The technical presentation of La Ciénaga is outstanding. In fact, this is one of the best looking discs in Criterion's Blu-ray catalog. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.