La Marea

The Argentinean woman Azul survives a dramatic car accident, but loses her entire family. Weighed down by grief, she leaves the city for a lonely cabin by the ocean. Here existence consists of just surviving from one day to the next. Every day, she has to fight the elements to get water and food. With a heavy water container on her back, she is struggling through the barren desert landscape around her. She drives herself to exhaustion and cuts herself off more and more from civilisation. Even her language disappears. Azul utters her first line 55 minutes into the film, when she forces the fisherman Eduardo to ”give her a son”.

La Marea is an extraordinarily beautiful and well-composed film, with impressive cinematography and stylistic devices. Its tone is minimalist and quiet, with captivating images of the Argentinean landscape. At the same time, it is full of dirty grief and raw primal urges, where the lead actress must play on the most basic of emotional registers, which perhaps makes La Marea to the most honest expression of grief ever filmed. It is challenging in its form, almost irritating in its quietude, but marvellously well photographed. Director Diego Martinez Vignatti employs light in a very special way, where the hard and cold light in the beginning of the film seems to be a reflection of the protagonist’s indifference to the world around her. Gradually, the light grows warmer and more natural, however, as the world is forcing itself on her ever more. An unsurpassed Argentinean film gem, a must-see! cvj