Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Tom Dooley This is a film that has very much divided opinions. First it is about a couple of related families – one is better off than the other and spend the hot Latin summer at their country pile which is crumbling and decaying (read metaphor for Argentinean society). The other live in the semi slum where over crowding and urban want combine to provide a life full of white background noise and encourage an aimlessness which could again be another semi veiled metaphor.The social bias and blatant racism of the haves with the have not 'Indians' is everywhere – the rampant alcoholism and wayward antics of all involved underline the dysfuntionality of a whole World where everyone seems to be too bored, tired or disinterested to even pretend to care any more. And what happens – lots of very little, with a dénouement I actually only saw coming moments before.So is it a good film? Well yes it is as it sets out to use the families to reflect the general malaise that Argentina was going through at the turn of the 21st Century and it does so deftly and with a lot of hidden skill. The direction is excellent as the sheer amount of characters to have interacting would be bewildering for anyone. So as a piece of work it is a high achiever. However, it is also meandering in places, it seems to lack focus and goes off at random tangents and often the actual plot seems to have taken the day off – and that makes for a film that is a strain to keep your attention and interest.I did watch all of it and appreciated it for the most part but I was left slightly dumbstruck at all the rave reviews – especially from critics. This could then be seen as an 'Emperors New Clothes' type thing as in once the band wagon got rolling they all piled on eager to out do each other with grovelling praise. But as I said it has many merits but just they fail to come together to make it a really great film.

Oslo Jargo (Bartok Kinski) Lucrecia Martel's "La Cienega" is an utterly boring look at a petit-bourgeois family that is so devoid of life, you wonder why they don't all just jump into a pool of quicksand and drown. There's no life in any of the scenes or characters, nothing but mundanity. The children have examples of sadism in them, when they shoot a cow stuck in mud; they are found roaming the forest doing nothing in particular.The beginning of the film finds the matriarch boozing it up at the pool with a bunch of equally lethargic friends. She slips and cuts her chest, and that is the major plot point, that and sitting in bed, driving in old jalopy cars, or doing nothing at all. A lot of wine drinking completes the tediously long scenes.The family lives on some estate somewhere in South America, where Indians are insulted. The Indians are not much better, going to parties to brawl or drink or play pool or hack up fish in the waters by a dam. You'll have a hard time getting to the end since it drags along.The children are selfish, spoiled brats. There's no "brilliance" or luminosity in this film at all. The extras include a film by the director Lucrecia Martel, where she boasts about her film. Also some film by the pretentious windbags of the "New Argentine Cinema" is found. A small booklet by another pretentious intellectual, who raves about how great Lucrecia Martel's "La Cienega", is also stuck with the DVD.This is a thoroughly average film despite what the reviews might claim about it.

jasonhirthler-741-314619 Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel wrote and directed this impressively rich and atmospheric look at moral dissipation among Argentina's upper classes. Set in northwestern Argentina, on a dilapidated country estate, the movie chronicles the quotidian malaise of an Argentine family, their cousins, servants, and the nearby town.Lushly and patiently filmed, the story follows the elder adults as they drink themselves into a stupor alongside their decrepit pool while their children cavort through the gloomy rooms of the country manor, killing off the idle hours of their summer holiday. Ignored by their parents, who are anxious to drown their own withered and broken relationships in alcohol, the children drive without licenses, race through the forest with shotguns, drink and dance at town parties.Martel's effortless style captures the aimlessness of their lives and casts an especially harsh light on the conflicted relationship between a small moneyed population with European ancestry and the indigent servant class of indigenous locals. The movie's languorous pace beautifully matches the hot and muggy atmosphere that lays like a blanket over the estate and its bored inhabitants...

Howard Schumann La Ciénaga, directed by first-timer Lucrecia Martel, uses a seemingly uneventful series of episodes and an atmospheric sense of impending doom to make a statement about the decadence of the Argentine middle class. The decaying families are portrayed without much sympathy, showing them as racist, uncaring, and self-indulgent.The screen veritably pulsates with life and ugliness. Every frame is filled with children and animals running in and out, dogs barking, everyone talking at the same time, music blaring, and the TV bellowing something about Virgin Mary sightings. It's almost as if the camera is eavesdropping on an intimate family gathering, making the viewer feel like an uninvited guest at a party.The narrative (such as it is) is about two families and their children thrown together at the end of a stifling hot summer, and how everybody bears the marks of carelessness and inattention: scars, burns, bruises. Nothing works in this milieu; the pool is very dirty, one boy has lost one eye, another is afraid of stories about dog-rats, drinking is excessive and accidents result as a consequence. The mother (Mecha) is a drunk who just seems to be waiting for the end to face life in bed for 20 years like her own mother. She makes racist remarks directed toward her servant, yells at her own daughter Momi, (who seems to be infatuated with the servant), and makes vague plans to go to Bolivia to buy school supplies for the kids.La Cienaga is not easy to watch. It is moody, sensual, atmospheric, almost unbearably intimate, with a constant level of anxiety and tension. You can feel the humidity building on your forehead. Danger is always near, and violence seems not just possible but probable. There is an unspoken longing for something, anything good to happen to relieve the emptiness of life. I was reminded of Chekhov and Dostoyevsky. It is almost Bunuelian in its feeling but, unlike Bunuel, it is not dark comedy, just dark.The unspoken backdrop is the recent history of Argentina, an unending nightmare of political violence, social unrest, and fiscal disaster. Only the children give us any hope for the future. It is a compelling picture of class arrogance with an ending as moving as any I've seen. Strongly recommended but bring a lot patience and a de-humidifier.