Episode 188: LA CIÉNAGA (2001) with Nick Kouhi

Featuring guest Nick Kouhi (​​https://twitter.com/kouhi_nick)! The debut of Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel is hot – but in an uncomfortable, sweaty, drenched kind of way. The matriarch of a rural summer home is bedridden after a drunken poolside injury; her cousin brings her family to tend house; her children play with guns in the woods and fish with machetes; there might be a monster lurking next door; it’s humid and it almost never seems to rain. Underneath the comings and goings of this middle-class morass, Martel’s portrait of life in post-dictatorship Argentina is laced with a certain sense of dread – the feeling that even the ones who want to get out of the swamp are destined to twist in the mud. Find Nick at the following links: “Las Fantasmas de Lucrecia Martel” by Nick Kouhi for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2022/08/25/las-fantasmas-de-lucrecia-martel/ https://twitter.com/kouhi_nick https://whatifcinema.org/essays https://facebook.com/nick.kouhi https://instagram.com/nickkouhi/ THE RARE PERFECTION OF LUCRECIA MARTEL (Aug 26-28 at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/the-rare-perfection-of-lucrecia-martel/ CRACKING OPEN THE DISNEY VAULT (Sept at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/cracking-open-the-disney-vault/ Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 188: LA CIÉNAGA (2001) with Nick Kouhi 3:49 - Nick’s background with Lucrecia Martel 7:13 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises) 12:50 - The understated malice uncovered by Martel’s revealing style 16:33 - The feeling that nobody can get out of the swamp 21:41 - Motion, emotion, bodies, and Bresson 24:53 - The frustration of a time bomb that just keeps ticking 36:22 - “History repeats itself” and Martel’s intersectional view 44:24 - Ghost stories, Argentinian history, and what’s outside the frame 57:41 - The Junk Drawer 1:00:32 - Cody’s Noteys: Swamplove (Swamp Thing Trivia)