Southern Breezes: Re-readings and Drifts in Laura Citarella’s Cinema

Introduction

Laura Citarella’s cinema, characterized by a distinctive style and profound thematic complexity, is significantly shaped by her involvement with the El Pampero Cine collective. Her films uniquely blend aesthetic choices with a rich narrative structure, employing a range of techniques from detective plots to science fiction, and expanding into the realms of metafiction. This intricate narrative is supported by dialogues that vary from verbose exchanges to deep silences, reflecting the films’ thematic depths.

The mise-en-scène and montage in Citarella’s work play critical roles in shaping the viewer’s perception of space, often creating contemplative environments that juxtapose melancholic settings or brooding ambiances with scenes of estrangement and ambiguity. This visual strategy not only enhances the narrative but also aligns with the characters’ journeys through mysterious and often indefinable landscapes.

This essay aims to dissect the core elements of Citarella’s cinematic language, focusing on her collaboration with El Pampero Cine. It will explore how her films utilize stylistic tools like ambiguity and estrangement to weave complex, genre-spanning narratives that engage with themes of adventure, mystery, and even espionage. Further, it will delve into her supernatural thematic explorations, where characters undergo processes of identification, denaturalization, and displacement.

Through a detailed examination of films from Ostende (2011) to Trenque Lauquen (2022), this essay will illuminate how Citarella’s unique aesthetic and narrative choices contribute to a distinct cinematic expression, positioning her as a pivotal figure in contemporary filmmaking.

Dense mysteries, enigmatic characters 

Trenque Lauquen and Ostende, the debut feature of Laura Citarella, feature a protagonist named Laura, played by Laura Paredes, whose drive to unravel mysteries connects the two films. This character’s quest often intersects with secondary characters, their life stories weaving small fictions within the larger narrative. Citarella’s cinephile vision shines through in both films, evoking the essence of cinematic masterpieces like Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). In Ostende, Laura explores a dense mystery with macabre overtones by observing through the indiscreet window of a hotel, an experience that morphs into a suspenseful and somber atmosphere over time. Trenque Lauquen echoes the stylistic traits of Ostende but with subtler and more contemplative touches. This approach re-engages the viewer’s complicit gaze, creating an intricate puzzle of winks, clues, and cinematic references.

Trenque Lauquen follows the journey of Ezequiel (Ezequiel Pierri) and Rafael (Rafael Spregelburd) along the western edges of the province of Buenos Aires. They are tracing the routes once travelled by Laura, who has mysteriously disappeared. Initially, scenes of their search were to conclude the film in a linear sequence, but a script rewrite moved these to the beginning, adding a layer of unpredictability. Their journey culminates at a restaurant and transitions into a flashback detailing Laura and Ezequiel’s investigation into a historical love affair between a teacher, Carmen Zuna (Laura Citarella), and her lover, Paolo Bertino (Ezequiel Pierri), which is narrated through letters voiced by Laura.

Rafael departs Trenque Lauquen by bus, returning to his university duties in Buenos Aires, accompanied by the ethereal sound of a theremin: a haunting tone that persists throughout the film. In the second part, a radio host shows Ezequiel a recording left by Laura, leading into another flashback. This segment of the film reveals yet another dimension of her life, involving a mysterious scientist. The narrative gradually becomes more enigmatic, and language fades into silence by the end, with words dissolving “similar to the lyrics of a song that become unintelligible.”¹

Alongside this shift in storytelling approach, there is also a corresponding shift towards an increasingly sombre atmosphere that envelops the protagonist and her relentless pursuit of unraveling an inexplicable mystery.

Laura, the main character of the film, is portrayed as a near-biologist, missing amid her relentless search for a plant specimen critical to her research. Her passion for revealing hidden truths leads her to discover an old love story hidden in correspondence within a library and later, the myth of a monstrous creature in the central park’s lagoon. The narrative seamlessly integrates romance, flashbacks, mythology, and science fiction twists. This complex tapestry of narratives not only traverses different times and realities but also captivates the viewer, inviting them to piece together the puzzle alongside Laura. The recurring theme across both Trenque Lauquen and Ostende — Laura’s obsession with solving mysteries—serves as a cornerstone, uniting the seemingly disparate elements into a cohesive exploration of her journey and its broader implications on the narrative structure and viewer engagement.

Trenque Lauquen

Discursive scarcity and contemplation

The narrative and stylistic complexities of Trenque Lauquen, characterized by its blend of genres and shifts in time and reality, stand in stark contrast to La mujer de los perros (Dog Lady, co-directed by Verónica Llinás, 2015), Laura Citarella’s second feature film. This film stands out in Laura Citarella’s oeuvre for its continuous flow and the absence of alternate narrative or temporal threads. The minimal dialogue directs attention to the film’s visual and auditory elements, emphasizing the landscape. The approach in Dog Lady fosters a cinema focused more on sensory experiences, a style also embraced by Argentine director Lisandro Alonso, whose films are shaped significantly by the ambiance of their settings.

Dog Lady showcases a more contemplative style, evidenced through long takes that follow the journey of a mysterious woman (Verónica Llinás) and her dogs, who faithfully accompany her everywhere. These scenes are filmed in wide shots, capturing vast and open spaces. The film depicts a wandering through uninhabited and rugged places, reminiscent of the settings in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010) and Old Joy (2006), representing a calmness stripped of the vertigo and abundance of urban life—a simple and self-sufficient lifestyle. Yet, there is also a sense of distancing that reflects a physical and spiritual void, filled by the presence and naturalness of the animals.

Unlike other films from the El Pampero Cine collective, known for their discursive abundance and exuberant narratives, Dog Lady aligns more closely with the (no longer so) new Argentine cinema, which favours a distance between image and discourse. This “extended image” compensates for the absence of dialogue.² The lack of voice and a discernible past in the solitary protagonist heightens the intrigue and mystery.

Inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s works, the film transitions gracefully between the rural landscapes and the urban settings of Buenos Aires. It showcases Laura Citarella’s patient, reflective, and liberated style of filmmaking, which sets her apart from her El Pampero colleagues like Mariano Llinás and Alejo Moguillansky. In Citarella’s films, the mysteries are sharper and more concentrated, the genre elements are understated, and the pace is deliberately slow, allowing the narrative and its elements ample space to unfold.³

For Citarella, narration seems designed to valorise spaces, to uncover the truth of space and time—a truth that, according to Eric Rohmer, is found in “reality as it is.”⁴ Cinema can solve the difficulty of presenting in an objective way the beautifulness of reality as it is. There’s a way of filming and a way of telling, and, in this case, the narration is entirely at the service of the place. 

This reflective and contemplative filmmaking approach shapes the manner in which an ill-defined story is observed and narrated. However, the narrative style takes a different turn in Citarella’s subsequent film, where secondary spaces and storylines cultivate an omnipresent and insidious atmosphere.

Dog Lady

Estrangement and ambiguity: between reality and new world 

Compared to earlier films like Dog Lady or Ostende, Trenque Lauquen represents a significant expansion and deepening of Laura Citarella’s cinematic landscape. This film features a richer tapestry of characters, settings, rural landscapes, city streets, muddy paths, and ambient music. The noticeable increase in these elements helps to intensify an overarching atmosphere of alienation right from the outset.

The aesthetic characteristics of the films from El Pampero Cine—perhaps political-poetic—focus on fostering a sense of estrangement from the everyday as a dominant sensation. This is not understood as an indefiniteness of representation or an ascetic distancing from the camera setup, but rather as a very conscious projection of ambiguity. Ambiguity here is a stylistic tool intended to shift the rhetorical-enunciative neutrality of the filmic apparatus. What emerges in Laura Citarella’s films—taken to a triumphant extreme in Trenque Lauquen—is an imperious and inescapable will to art that finds its ultimate argumentative justification in these compositional margins and suburban territories: to invent passionately intricate stories starting from an ordinary slice of land.

The intriguing challenge is how to craft a new world using our familiar one as a catalyst, how to make the commonplace feel strange by introducing a formal disarrangement. Contrary to popular belief, this approach doesn’t detach us from reality but rather plunges us deeper into it, prompting fresh inquiries. Is there a more thrilling creative exercise than uncovering and crafting mysteries within the mundane everydayness that surrounds us?

Thus, the core concept involves using estrangement as an aesthetic-cinematographic technique, not strictly bound by its psychoanalytic definition. This method reasserts a critical but often overlooked idea reminiscent of Rohmer: cinema, like art in general, is not just a passive, clear depiction of reality but a poetic exploration of its deep mysteries. It either constructs a new world or reveals an ethical-formal truth through the ghostly echoes that resonate urgently within our culture and territories.

We might argue that reality is not a fixed entity but a series of reconstructions—reappropriations crafted from its enigmatic layers. This reshaping of the familiar meanders through the expansive frames of films like Trenque Lauquen, manifesting as an unseen, tacit spectre made tangible through narrative. The film layers mythologies, ironies, verbiage, and fears within the context of a local radio program, or during elongated, reflective conversations with craft beer. A mythical creature lurks in the Trenqué-lauquén (round lagoon, in the language of the native inhabitants), and a poignant epistolary mystery unfolds between two lovers, bound by the ageless, enigmatic dilemmas of love. Within these juxtapositions lies the complex weave of aesthetic and narrative estrangements that Citarella articulates with deliberate patience and sensory precision.

The enigma of a poetess

A reflective portrayal of reality is also evident in the domain of biographical documentaries. Straddling the line between objectivity and subjectivity, Laura Citarella endeavours to piece together the enigmatic life of a poetess.

At the outset of Las Poetas Visitan A Juana Bignozzi (The Poets Visit Juana Bignozzi, 2019), a documentary co-directed by Laura Citarella and Mercedes Halfon, a young Argentine writer inventories the belongings left by the poet Juana Bignozzi in her Buenos Aires apartment. These belongings range from vinyl records, predominantly classical music, to books, numerous photographs, passports, notes, clothing, and a collection of small elephants. Throughout the film, a group of poets analyse one of Bignozzi’s poems that reflects on her youth and generational themes. Although her poetry often appears cryptic and reveals little about her personal experiences, Mercedes guides the audience through a series of photographs and discussions, delving into more personal aspects of Bignozzi’s life. This narrative approach mirrors that of El viaje de Javier Heraud (The Journey of Javier Heraud, 2019) by Javier Corcuera, released in the same year, which explores the life of the Peruvian poet and guerrilla fighter Javier Heraud.

In Laura Citarella’s documentary, a harmonious blend of voices and presences pervades the narrative. Mercedes Halfon serves as the executor, exploring the past as she sifts through and arranges numerous photos on a table. Meanwhile, a voiceover recounts Juana Bignozzi’s childhood with her working-class parents and her prolonged stay in Europe with her husband. This biographical portrayal, enriched with various documents, seeks to construct a character that invokes numerous questions and invites deeper exploration.

An indefinable identity 

As The Poets Visit Juana Bignozzi unfolds, it becomes clear that Laura Citarella, as one of the directors, does not hide her own voice. She actively participates, suggesting ideas during the staging, expressing uncertainties about how to portray a poet, and reading poems alongside her filming team. Bignozzi’s voice, recorded on tape, reflects on the persistence of poetry in old age and the satisfaction of having lived in a different era. The documentary then reveals images of the poet filmed on the street and at home, accompanied by a seemingly trivial dialogue with her husband about the virtue of sparkling water. In the end, various voices recite poetry in an effort to uncover deeper meanings:

Do the words of poets help the poets themselves?

Does the helplessness of their own anecdote

help the path of poets?

Does my presence in your destiny

help my own destiny?

Those who play with important things

will not understand my life

a life too much discussed

without death, the experts would say.

These verses by Bignozzi that appear at the end of the documentary do not seem to help but rather discourage any effort to understand a “life too much discussed.” Here, the voices recite the verses, but these verses resist.

A comparative analysis of Alejo Moguillansky’s La vendedora de fósforos (The Little Match Girl, 2017) and Laura Citarella’s documentary on Juana Bignozzi can reveal their unique cinematic styles. Moguillansky don’t care about the script. Influenced by Robert Bresson, he films “the resistance of a body to say something, or the resistance of a text to being spoken by someone”; a tension that feeds a good film, a concept he believes is central to cinema’s appeal.⁵

 This is evident in The Little Match Girl, where several girls are seen reciting lines from Hans Christian Andersen’s story beside a burning match. The girls’ voices are captured by Walter Jacob, who attempts to stage the narrative in a grand setting with galleries and an orchestra that plays enigmatic music. This music creates a dissonance with the story, fostering a distinct tension between the spoken text and the orchestral accompaniment. This method highlights Moguillansky’s focus on the theatrical and auditory elements in storytelling, contrasted with Citarella’s more introspective documentary style, which seeks to delve deeper into Bignozzi’s personal and poetic world.

And it is in this type of cinematic approach that the inexorable presence of the first-person documentary emerges as an enunciative shift that is not censored but reaffirmed in its own multiple complexity. Our personal voice, much like the authorial voice embodied by the implicit presence of every filmmaker in their work, is never individual. The art of cinema, as we well know, is always a compendium of intertwined voices and perspectives that at some point—perhaps in the best case scenario—achieve a certain aesthetic unity and stylistic homogeneity. However, the latent voice that stands as formal enunciation will always be multiple, multi-sonant, and polyphonic. Regarding the inevitability of autobiographical intertextual connections in the materiality of a film, we can refer to the following reflection by Citarella:

“The intertwining of personal life and the filmmaking process is a recurrent occurrence in our films. It forms a reciprocal relationship where events from our lives naturally seep into the film, and, in turn, the ideas and concepts within the film impact our own experiences. This ongoing dialogue between cinema and personal life generates a perpetual flow of inspiration and mutual influence. 

In Trenque Lauquen, the six-year journey of making the film coincided with significant personal milestones, such as my pregnancy and the presence of my daughter.”⁶ 

Las Poetas Visitan A Juana Bignozzi

The mystery of poetry and the words

The Poets Visit Juana Bignozzi is a mosaic of written words and multiple voices attempting to unravel the mysteries of poetry and cinema. Viewers become detectives in an investigation that seeks to reconstruct the life of a writer from the evidence left behind. The documentary not only showcases the act of filming but also highlights the trials and difficulties in finding the right scene to reveal something deeper. In Clorindo Testa (2022), a documentary produced by Laura Citarella, this process of searching is more overtly questioned by the voice and presence of its director, Mariano Llinás.

The core of the story is a book about the architect and painter Clorindo Testa, written by his friend, the advertiser Julio Llinás, who is also the director’s father. How can one represent the work and life of a poet, an architect, or a father without following well-trodden paths or falling into solemnity? Clorindo Testa features strange or out-of-place moments, such as when two experts analyse the chemical elements of a painting by Clorindo Testa. There are also self-referential scenes showing the images in the process of editing, the recording of the director’s voice-over, or rehearsals with an actress. However, there are also authentic, less contrived moments when the director’s mother, son, and even pet appear, questioning the true central theme of the film.

In both documentaries from the Argentine collective, poet Mercedes Halfon and director Mariano Llinás strive to uncover the meaning of the words written on the pages of books. Thus, the clues are exposed in this detective work to answer the mysteries surrounding characters from the past.

This inclination or tendency to find deeper meanings in different realities through observation was already evident in Citarella’s debut feature.

Surveillances 

In an off-season seaside resort where nothing significant seems to happen, Ostende unfolds. This setting is also present in films like El premio (The Prize, 2011) by Paula Markovitch and Una novia errante (A Stray Girlfriend, 2007) by Ana Katz. In this tranquil place of leisure and rest, unsettling situations begin to arise, catching Laura’s attention. A man, peering out a window, remarks, “Despite their sense of orientation, they are absolutely lost. They can’t find the nest.” It’s unclear if this comment about the birds is an allusion to Laura or another woman.

Details accumulate, suggesting an intrigue that never fully clarifies. Laura starts to follow the same man and a woman as they stroll through the resort or bathe on the beach; her gaze watches them like a detective. These scenes of the guests on the beach, seen from Laura’s point of view, generate ambiguity. Devoid of dialogues, the images can be interpreted in multiple ways, creating several possible meanings.

This surveillance in Ostende arises spontaneously from observing behaviours at a distance. Driven by curiosity, Laura deliberately watches the windows opposite her hotel room and begins to imagine or speculate, as if trying to solve a mystery that has been building. She searches for information, attempting to piece together the puzzle. In another scene, she listens to the man’s voice through the wall of her hotel room, reminiscent of Gene Hackman’s character in The Conversation (1974) by Francis Ford Coppola, trying to find evidence.

Ostende

Ostende

Investigations

El Pampero’s films, such as Historias extraordinaries (2008) and La Flor (The Flower, Mariano Llinás, 2018), along with El escarabajo de oro (The Gold Bug, Alejo Moguillansky and Fia-Stina Sandlund, 2014), often utilize maps and photographs as crucial elements that trigger quests and aid in solving mysteries associated with missing individuals or hidden treasures. These tools not only kick-start the narratives but also include scenes that capture the protagonists’ viewpoints as they delve into reconstructing the lives of others. As these characters undertake their investigations, the audience is introduced to new characters and minor stories that enrich and intertwine with the main plot, creating a rich tapestry of interconnected narratives.

During the first flashback of Trenque Lauquen, Ezequiel becomes involved in an investigation surrounding Professor Carmen Zuna and her student Paolo Bertino, not only through letters hidden in old books but also through photographs and conversations with other professors. In the end, some doubts are cleared, but other questions remain about a relationship that ends abruptly, almost as a premonition of what will happen later.

Similarly, in Historias extraordinarias, Z (played by Walter Jacob) investigates the life of Cuevas through letters, an agenda, and a map with marks in different cities. “Who is Cuevas?,” Z asks himself before leaving his boring office job to embark on a journey to Haras Los Pirineos, where he suffers an accident and is rescued by a man named Saponara, who takes him to his farm.

Likewise, in La Flor ‘s fourth episode, a character named Gatto (Pablo Seijo) appears with a firm intention to investigate the “car stuck in a tree” event and the strange disappearance of its occupants: the director (Walter Jacob) and his film crew. Apparently a scientist, although his exact profession is unclear, Gatto starts to write an extensive letter to an unknown addressee, explaining his findings through a map and a notebook abandoned by the director in his car. With these clues, new routes and scenarios open up.

Solving enigmas

In exploring the films Ostende, Historias extraordinarias, and Trenque Lauquen, a thematic thread of solving mysteries and enigmas weaves through their narratives, each employing unique storytelling techniques that engage the viewer in unravelling layers of intrigue. In Ostende, Laura and her boyfriend confront the enigmatic presence of unidentified guests, crafting a narrative from their unsettling observations. The silent man and his two companions, reminiscent of characters from a B-movie, add to the film’s mysterious atmosphere, maintaining tension until its climax. This narrative approach, narrated by a hotel employee, foreshadows the unfolding complexities in both Ostende and Dog Lady, enhancing their enigmatic tones.

Similarly, Historias extraordinarias, explores themes of surveillance and investigation through the character X’s plight. Confined to a hotel room, X navigates a complex judicial case involving hidden negotiations and a sought-after briefcase of gold. His meticulous observations from the hotel window, observing passersby below, evoke a sense of visual and narrative intrigue akin to Alfred Hitchcock’s style, deepening the film’s mystery.

In Trenque Lauquen, the exploration of mysteries takes a metafictional turn in its second part. A radio host introduces Ezequiel to a recording left by Laura, where her voiceover declares a profound narrative shift: “Here begins the true story. It’s not the books and letters, nor Ezequiel or Rafael. It’s the little one.” This revelation marks a critical juncture as Laura embarks on a new investigation surrounding the enigmatic creature in the lagoon, paralleling X’s investigative approach in Historias extraordinarias.

Like X, Laura engages in nocturnal surveillance of the scientist and her associates, meticulously piecing together clues under the cover of darkness. This method turns the viewer into an active participant, deciphering the narrative through subtle visual and auditory cues. These metafictional techniques not only deepen the mysteries within Trenque Lauquen but also highlight the evolution of its characters and narrative complexity.

Across these films, from Ostende’s eerie hotel guests to Historias extraordinarias’ judicial intrigues and Trenque Lauquen’s cryptic investigations, the theme of solving enigmas transcends mere plot, engaging audiences in a layered exploration of narrative and perception.

Ostende

Trenque Lauquen

Extraordinary Stories

Disoriented characters and narrative labyrinths

Citarella’s films resonate with a sound and visual imagery reminiscent of sister films such as Historias extraordinarias and the sprawling epic La Flor. This atmosphere invites viewers to unravel mysteries and unearth hidden treasures. 

In Trenque Lauquen, for instance, the restless characters defy the stereotypical small-town narrative imposed by the predictable and dominant logic of urban-centric common sense, revealing unexpected layers beneath their outward appearances. They embrace curiosity, surprise, and the often neglected capacity for wonder. While some scenes and passages may allow for romanticization and local colour, they often adopt a parodic approach to exploring the ecosystem of Trenque Lauquen that dominates the screen. For instance, there’s a scene where the protagonist’s ex-boyfriend wanders through the deserted corridors of the Municipal building and engages in a humorous exchange with an employee.

It must be emphasized: these characters are not your everyday, ordinary individuals. Rather, they are disoriented and extraordinary, as highlighted by Llinás in his 2008 compendium. Citarella boldly juxtaposes (micro)stories, employing metalinguistic and literary techniques such as time jumps and shifts in perspective and focalization, which immerse us in that thread of mysteries, impulses, and inner fictions. Everything intertwines with a palimpsestic force, where clues are gathered in hopes of glimpsing a resolution to the overarching puzzle.

The shots of the film exude a constant cinephilia, embracing intertextuality that is evident in several moments, with references to legendary figures like Lady Godiva or quotes from somewhat forgotten passionate works such as Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Woman (1926) by Aleksandra Kolontái,⁷ among other references.

We reiterate our assertion: the Citarella-Paredes duo’s ingenuity propels the plot forward, compelling viewers to engage in the quasi-detective work undertaken by their characters. Given the intricate narrative labyrinths, time is essential: the film spans over four hours. Trenque Lauquen also features pauses and dramatic interludes that prompt reflection and sharpen thought imagery. The observational scrutiny, particularly evident when Verónica Llinás shares scenes with the unsettling Elisa Carricajo, invites voyeuristic engagement. Thus, viewers are indirectly tasked with meticulously studying various factors to deduce possible inferences, akin to a detective game. However, not all enigmas are resolved, especially when the cinematic composition emphasizes immersive form over explicit content. In essence, form triumphs over content in this cinematic alchemy.

Abundance discursive and contemplation 

And this is perhaps another factor as central as it is tension-filled in the Pampero cinematography, which triggers dilemmas for us: the discursive verbosity, in the moments of dialogue that characterize many of their films (though not so much in Citarella’s first three offerings, which, as mentioned, provide more space for breathing and contemplation), does it imply an informational overload subordinated to advancing the action, or is it quite the opposite: inviting us to get lost in so much verbiage to focus on the emotional contours of the characters (the contours suggested by their gestures and bodies, for example)? When we are shown a landscape of ample magnitudes, is it intended as mere contextualization through establishing shots, or is it the emergence of cinema as a fragmented and distorted threshold, as a window that opens to a fictional poetic realm as strange as it is easily recognizable (a lagoon, a few trees, a vast rural plain)? Here is another crucial detour: why do we find it so difficult, when watching movies, to consider the importance of moments of suspension, of in-between, like Godard used to say? What lies between the images, in their interstitial folds?

Films like Trenque Lauquen do not answer these questions: they gather and re-question, hypothesize, open the game. They project oscillations of meaning and celebrate ambiguities, while the frames lost in seemingly mundane landscapes and impassive gestures give us space (and time) to think. To feel like lost detectives for a while.

On these paths that invite us to go astray, the protagonists of Trenque Lauquen and La Flor experience changes similar to those in Historias extraordinarias. Mariano Llinás announces that “the stories are starting to get vaguer” hinting that the outcomes of the three stories might lead nowhere. Just as Z spends time on Saponara’s farm in the 2008 film and Gatto stays at the insane asylum with the director’s friends in La Flor, Laura spends several days with two new characters in Trenque Lauquen: the enigmatic doctor Esperanza and her German friend. However, on these paths, the enigmas remain unresolved.

Like Z losing interest in Cuevas’ life, Laura eventually abandons her new friends and the mystery, embarking on a journey without a defined course, much like Verónica Llinás in Dog Lady. The narrative dissolves in a final journey through an abandoned house, a tavern, and deserted landscapes, where nature becomes more prominent. Laura’s presence will linger in the past, in Ezequiel’s memory, and as a voice recorded at the radio station.

Trenque Lauquen

The Prospective Monster

Before finishing, it is worth allowing ourselves a brief conceptual (and to some extent, historical) detour. In an engaging essay published by Fernando Moreno Serrano for the Complutense University of Madrid (2011), the author defines the sinuous and disruptive identity of the so-called Prospective Monster: that obtuse entity that configures the generic horizon of science fiction.⁸ Although Moreno approaches it from literature, the traits he describes could well be applied to the discipline of cinema, in relation to the prospective view of the world that we usually understand under the conception of futurology: an ideology aimed at an uncertain, diffuse, and foggy future, but an inexorable one, where technology as a strange and disruptive element plays a central role.

J. Merrill states that “the extraterrestrial in science fiction is nothing more than an extension of our human concerns.”⁹ This assertion aligns well with the tradition of artistic representation that informs these famous narrative archetypes. The process of humanizing beings presented as Others—anthropologically distant and estranged alterities—becomes evident in the genre’s expressive lines. Over time, this process consolidates as an implicit guideline or formal directive: a science fiction plot must always confront two opposing yet analogous perspectives—the view toward the Other and the view from the Other (that is, from that threatening otherness).

The anthropological paradox of science fiction lies in its ability to make the Other appear more human as it becomes more alien. This paradox forces us to confront a contradictory yet unavoidable truth: through stories that explore the Other, science fiction exposes us to the process of dehumanization. Essentially, the Other serves as a distorted mirror reflecting aspects of ourselves. Embracing this dehumanization entails the potential to denaturalize and estrange the familiar, employing the fundamental elements of art—such as image, time, rhythm, and form—to manipulate and reshape our perceptions. 

This latter point is also prospective: establishing a climate of profuse speculative projection that encourages doubt, suspicion, ambivalence of meaning, and a curious play of mutations and wanderings using the “significant rhetoric of the poetics of language.”¹⁰

In Citarella’s films, there are no explicit traits that refer to the supernatural order, but rather, following Moreno once again, a series of concrete anthropological concerns are lavishly presented, which the cinematic projection makes prospective through various formal, rhetorical, and enunciative movements and articulations. From this perspective, we could define them as speculative cinematic displacements. In Trenque Lauquen, the characters shaped by the Lauras (Citarella and Paredes) spend their time conjecturing, imagining, suspecting, venturing their thoughts—in short, speculating. The filmic form decides to reinforce this dramatic-aesthetic coherence through speculative displacements: an audiovisual staging that responds to these concerns, from the fixed panoramic shots to the lethargic panning at the end.

Of course, it goes without saying that the aforementioned Prospective Monster will not always be projected and embodied in its ostensible corporeality: it may never be a single monstrous, alienated, and creature-like figure, but it will indeed raise the question of the estrangement of one’s own interiority, of the inextricable subjectivity of one’s own being. It is a monster born from human concerns about the self, in the present and the future, and to consolidate itself, it requires an opposition that is pointed out or merely delineated, an Other that stands out as it is named (and guessed) to be different but reveals itself as similar. Just as in La guerra del cerdo (Diary of a Pig War, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, 1975) or Invasión (Invasion, Hugo Santiago, 1969), estrangement and speculative tension are introduced without explicit or anthropomorphized monstrous presences, the same happens in contemporary cases like Trenque Lauquen: they phantomized a territory without making it a diametrically alien coordinate in its audiovisual atmosphere, but rather eerie and spectral, over-densified with mysteries on the verge of exploding.

Following this observation, we could speak of a fantastic tension, but fantasy is always more disruptive, categorical, and definitive. In the films we analyse, there is a certain nuance in the tone and the way this situation of ambiguity regarding the near future unfolds, making us think of science fiction. That is to say, the establishment of a climate profusely laden with ambiguity, prospective speculation, and questions about the immediate future that condition the narrative line of the present and keep the characters in suspense, brimming with doubts forced by that ambiguity which they themselves pronounce and reproduce.

To conclude this digression, let us say that science fiction is not defined by the explicitness of schematically axiological or antagonistic confrontations, the warlike narratives, as Lucrecia Martel points out. Science fiction does not navigate the sea of antonymy but that of contradiction.

Trenque Lauquen

Conclusion

Throughout this exploration, we have identified, dissected, and enumerated various aesthetic and expressive shifts, operations, and mechanisms that enable a possible conceptual rereading in light of the notion of style. Here, style is understood as a particular mode of expression linked to a specific authorial figure or to characteristic epochal features (such as an aesthetic current within a given socio-historical framework).

As Argentine semiologist Oscar Steimberg asserts, “genre descriptions articulate thematic and rhetorical features with greater clarity, on the basis of enunciative regularities.” Style descriptions, on the other hand, are organized around the description of a doing, where “the enunciative component usually occupies the first place.”¹¹ By recovering this often-overlooked dimension, we can recognize the importance of specific modes of expression that require a common and consolidated aesthetic tradition over a certain amount of time to be objectified and systematized. This is precisely the case with the inexhaustible aesthetic-expressive journey of El Pampero Cine (which inevitably constitutes the assumption of a political-poetic or ethical-aesthetic position in the face of the world).

Within the storytelling approaches of Mariano Llinás and Alejo Moguillansky, distinct styles can be recognized. However, in Laura Citarella’s films, there emerges a unique way of filming that captures characters who allow themselves to be guided by surprise and wonder, often appearing lost in the disorientation of their itineraries, immersed in estrangement and ambiguity, seeking answers.

Detective micro-plots and science-fiction twists and turns are complemented by landscape nuances with a strong emphasis on the choreographic dimension of the camera’s enunciative body. The discursive labyrinths of extreme verbosity often culminate in stark contrasts: from the excess of spoken word to the most unsettling and profound of silences.

All these juxtapositions of aesthetic options, potentialities of meaning projected from modes of formal configuration (which should not be subordinated to the thematic-narrative order but expanded towards the expressive folds and contours of mise-en-scène), emerge as expressive imaginaries that demarcate a certain periodization in the history of contemporary Argentine cinema. They become a mark, a sign, an indelible trace of a historical period that, contrary to what is sometimes thought, is not exhausted or on the verge of extinction.

In Laura Citarella’s films, there is a process of reconstruction and reappropriation of reality. Her way of filming captures characters who allow themselves to be guided by surprise and wonder, often appearing lost in the disorientation and confusion of their itineraries, immersed in estrangement and ambiguity, and struggling with the impossibility of obtaining answers or even simple interactions. This estrangement of consciousness is further enhanced by the landscape, which is removed from discursive abundance.

As in some films by Lisandro Alonso, Lucrecia Martel, or Rodrigo Moreno, the unpredictability and changes in these journeys seem to leave us adrift. We end up overwhelmed and lost in these intricate and unpredictable paths and journeys, by not being able to find answers to the questions or searches. The mysteries aren’t solved in any way in Ostende, Historias extraordinarias, or some La Flor‘s episodes.

If we consider that Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017) and Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, 2014) go beyond the referential times and places of the colonial past, towards a place of relative autonomy from the spaces and times of Argentine imaginaries, as Jens Andermann points out, then we could say that these spaces in the staging and in the narrative acquire greater meaning and influence.¹²

Uncertain behaviours generate this unpredictability and ambiguity. If the dialogues are imprecise or are reduced at some point — as occurs in Trenque Lauquen, La mujer de los perros, La mujer sin cabeza (The Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel, 2008), Los Muertos (The Dead, Lisandro Alonso, 2014) or the recent Los delincuentes (The Delinquents, Rodrigo Moreno, 2023) — the narratives become darker. The stories become more diffuse according to the degree of indefiniteness. In the films of Lucrecia Martel or Lisandro Alonso, the true intentions seem to be outside the camera’s view, scattered somewhere.

To conclude this essay, it is worth raising a warning of concern: the current policies implemented by the Argentine government are pushing Argentine cinema into a scenario of increasing uncertainty and vulnerability. In this regard, we recommend viewing a video where Mariano Llinás’s public statements on this issue can be heard.¹³ The contextual and political subtext once again constitutes a fundamental part of a certain stylistic idiosyncrasy that is already unavoidable. In the words of Roger Koza, a renowned Argentine film critic: “aesthetics presents a regime of sensibility that never ceases to be the vehicle of an ideology. In cinema, the way of enunciating is also part of any lucid and authentic denunciation.”¹⁴ 

This article was originally written in Spanish, then translated into English and approved by both authors.

Endnotes