La Ciénaga (2001)

86% of critics liked it
(36 reviews)
78% of users liked it
(1,269 ratings)

Two families try to make the best of a bad situation as they suffer through a crippling heat wave in this neo-realistic drama, featuring a primarily non-professional cast. Tali (Mercedes Moran) is minding four small children with little help from her husband, who is preoccupied with the opening of… More Two families try to make the best of a bad situation as they suffer through a crippling heat wave in this neo-realistic drama, featuring a primarily non-professional cast. Tali (Mercedes Moran) is minding four small children with little help from her husband, who is preoccupied with the opening of hunting season, as a record hot spell grips Argentina. Things aren't much better for her cousin Mecha (Graciela Borges), who is looking after four teenagers and a husband (Martin Adjemian) who can hardly be bothered to help out, but Mecha does have a pool, even if it hasn't been cleaned in quite a while. Tali and her brood end up spending much of the summer with Mecha as the town is riveted by the appearance of the Virgin Carmen on the city's water tower, and a series of thunderstorms add an awful humidity to the summer's unbearable heat. While seemingly improvised, La Cienaga was actually carefully scripted by Lucrecia Martel, who won a screenwriting award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival prior to making her directorial debut with this feature. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 40 min.
Directed By: Lucrecia Martel
Written By: Lucrecia Martel
Genres: Drama, Art House & International, Comedy

In Theaters: Oct 3, 2001 Limited
On DVD: Feb 1, 2005
Studio: Cowboy Booking International

Critic Reviews

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle
Experiencing this film ultimately becomes as stimulating as watching metal rust.
Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News
There's a real energy in the way that La Cienaga takes nothing for granted -- except your attention and your intelligence.
Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star
A strikingly well-directed, relentlessly dreary debut feature from Argentine director Lucrecia Martel.
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail
Look closely and you'll find something not often present in your average art-house flick -- a hint, intense and unsettling, of art itself.
Jay Carr, Boston Globe
The triumph of La Cienaga lies in Martel's way of fashioning the kind of ensemble performance that draws us in by convincing us we're watching behavior, not acting.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
By its end we are glad to see the last of most of its characters, but we will not quickly forget them.
Jake Euker, Filmcritic.com
the most remarkable debut in recent experience
Brent Simon, Now Playing Magazine
Too trying to even the most sympathetically disheartened and cynical viewer.
Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"La Cienaga" literally means the swamp, and the film feels it: a hothouse atmosphere of heat waves and rainstorms and the mired feeling of life stuck in a social bog.
Kim Morgan, Oregonian
[Martel's] technique works, often brilliantly, in depicting the hyper-real, unsettling atmosphere of a sometimes normal, potentially violent, mostly sick family.
Eric Monder, Film Journal International
La Cienaga is well worth the trouble finding -- and sitting through -- wherever it plays.

Read all 11 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Stella D

this film is one of those discomfort making works like mike leigh's naked or solondz' happiness. the study of a bourgeois family on vacation, mostly having a miserable time: there's no real plot here but the ending, when it comes, seems inevitable. rather stunning… More
this film is one of those discomfort making works like mike leigh's naked or solondz' happiness. the study of a bourgeois family on vacation, mostly having a miserable time: there's no real plot here but the ending, when it comes, seems inevitable. rather stunning for a debut film. be warned: there are virtually no likeable characters. i'd love to see more of martel's work
Elvira B

La Cienaga is the story of two bourgeoise families on a summer vacation in their country house in Argentina. Alone, isolated from urban life, unavoidably close to each other, the family members face their own decadance as a group and push themselves, inentionally or not, to the the… More
La Cienaga is the story of two bourgeoise families on a summer vacation in their country house in Argentina. Alone, isolated from urban life, unavoidably close to each other, the family members face their own decadance as a group and push themselves, inentionally or not, to the the verge of complete domestic destruction. Nothing works: they don't understand each other, don't like each other, can't stand each other. The mother is sick, and so sick of life that she prefers to remain sick in bed rather than keep living like she used to. The father is an detached figure in a corner. The brothers and sisters are, of course, in the wake, the middle, or the end of adolescence, with all its respective problems and dilemmas. The other family contains a shallow, overworking mother, a taciturn, passive father, and their little children. The Swamp is crowded, and noisy; Lucrecia Martel perfectly translates the sticky and unconfortable sensation of humid hot weather, the smell of wet vegetation, dirty pools, brown-water rivers, and the phony cool of electric fans all over the place. All actors and actresses are excellent in their roles, and it's beautifully shot, making the most out of inanimate objects jus as well as characters doing superficial, day-to-day tasks, to create that unconfortable atmosphere of familiar-but-uncertain. Although it lacks a plot per se, there's an everpresent feeling that what is happening is leading someplace. Martel also masterfully creates sexual tension, loads of it, in a film where no sex takes place whatsoever, and where all the characters are, well, related. Regardless of whether it's awkward, Martel goes for it because it's real. La Cienaga a slow-paced, rambling study of the human condition that builds tension until the unavoidable ending. GREAT. One of the best Argentinian films I've seen.
Emily B

A very promising debut from Lucrecia Martel. No real plot but that doesn't matter when it's such a great study a family life. Beautifully shot also.