User Reviews

This is a wonderfully tense noir mystery that rewards patience; both parts I and II taken together make up four and a half hours.

As many mysteries do, it begins in the middle. When botanist Laura goes missing her older boyfriend, Rafa, and would be suitor Chicho, team up to search for her, but find no trace, nor any apparent reason for her disappearance. She left with Chicho's car, so it seems to them unlikely she was abducted. Rafa convinces himself that she is in away in pursuit of a new orchid and will re-emerge once her work is completed. But they find a note from Laura, to Chicho, concerning a project they were working on. In addition to her work as a botanist, Laura has a spot on the radio where she brings attention to historic women. During research for this at the library, she has found love letters hidden in pages of books that border on the pornographic.

Part One concerns Laura's life prior to disappearance, told as flashbacks, and her developing affair with Chicho.

The second part begins with a seemingly unrelated mystery. Director Laura Citarella deliberately avoids convention; the film may be seen as a noir, but refuses to follow its norms, most obviously in its cinematography, its score and its chapter structure, which when presented always abruptly interrupts the conversation or the music.

As if to emphasize that she is doing her own thing, Citarella introduces an element of science fiction, which moves the fable into absurdist territory for a while. Meanwhile, new characters, new micro-mysteries, are continually introduced.

When the ending arrives, it is as ambiguous as one might expect. Has the mystery been solved, or are its various strands left to meander on endlessly - viewers will have different opinions, which I think is a really appealing feature. Any degree of unresolution does seem perversely satisfying however. That is the sort of film this is. The real fascination is in the dialogue, like in the best noir. Any application of logic is likely to be a waste, rather sit back and enjoy the reaction of the characters to the situations they are presented with.

It is a highly entertaining piece of what I suppose may best be termed, anti-noir.

IMDb score 7.3 / 10 - My score 9 / 10.

The first half of the movie (part 1) is a fresh and interesting piece. It shows great premise, despite a not particularly sustained pace. There's plenty of space to grow attached to the main characters, interested in their story, and attracted to the mystery surrounding Trenque Lauquen. There are long, atmospheric pauses that implicitly say much more than any dialogue could. There's poetry. There's a truly inspired sub-plot (Carmen Zuna). There's also much, much more, and the length of the movie - over 4 hours, 2 hours at the first half point - doesn't feel overambitious by its halfway point. All the ingredients of a great work are in place, in the right number to engage and keep engaged. The actors are great, the music is creatively understated and descriptive, the writing and photography masterful.

Then, the second half arrives. Here, instead of starting to unravel something, additional stuff is thrown in the mix. And it piles up. Previous sub-plots are explicitly and intentionally forgotten, in order to make space for new ones. Interesting ideas get lost. The pace slows further, until the last segment brings it almost to a halt. No satisfying conclusion is sought or found.

The main issue is that it wouldn't still be as bad if the movie was cut short earlier. After the long final drag, the ending is so uninspiringly cryptic that it made me regret spending 4 hours of my life on this movie. It simply felt very lazy.

I honestly do not understand. It's really hard to figure out the choices done in the second half, in light of the great results of the first half. It almost feels like they found themselves with too many things on their hand, and thought, so how do we make this work? Simple, we leave it as it is. It's a common issue I find in most smaller art movie productions - sadly, the perfect recipe to be confined to the smallest public possible.