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One of the most intense cinematic experiences of the year: this and much more is “Trenque Lauquen”, a film which is courageously distributed in our theaters after its presentation in the Orizzonti section at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.
It was not an easy choice to bring it to Italy, partly because there are not very many South American films in our cinemas, but even more so due to its particular structure: “Trenque Lauquen” is in fact a project divided into two parts, which in turn divided into numerous chapters, for a total duration of more than four hours.
Director Laura Citarella is part of the Pampero Cine collective, one of the most interesting production companies in contemporary cinema and a group that has accustomed us to long-term projects: “La flor” by Mariano Llinás from 2018, one of the most significant titles of the Argentine history, lasts 14 hours and is also a unique experience to say the least, full of important stimuli. At the center of “Trenque Lauquen” there is a woman who suddenly disappears. Two men set out to look for her: they both love her. Why did she leave? Each of them harbors their own suspicions and hides them from the other who, mysteriously, never rises to the role of true rival. Neither of them is right: but who cares about the rest? This sudden escape becomes the hidden nucleus of a series of stories that the film delicately intertwines. “Trenque Lauquen” is a film full of mysteries, a feature film that talks about the secrets of another woman’s heart, but also the secrets of life of a country village governed by a supernatural event that no one seems to perceive.
“Trenque Lauquen” and the other films of the week
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The pleasure of storytelling
As in other Pampero Cine films (think also of the beautiful “Historias extraordinarias”, also by Llinás), “Trenque Lauquen” is a production in which we perceive all the pleasure of narration, as if we were reading a magnificent novel that weaves together history , events, in different moments, times and spaces. It is in fact also a film of secret letters hidden in books, of declarations of silent passions, of maps to study and bonds to discover. There is no need to worry too much about the duration: Laura Citarella it lets us enter the story in medias res from the first minutes and the entire project is an extraordinary pleasure to follow and interpret. We spectators also play detectives in this project as simple as it is monumental, endowed with surprising humanity and truly original dramaturgical ideas.
The Old Oak
Ken Loach gives her great emotions with what should be the last film of his career: “The Old Oak”. Set in a village in the north-east of England, the film tells of the many young people who are abandoning that land after the mines in the village have been closed. This is how what was once a thriving community finds itself full of anger, resentment and without a shred of hope for the future. The houses become available again and at an affordable price, offering a safe place to the Syrian refugees who arrived in Great Britain in the last years. But how will the Syrians be welcomed by the locals? And what will become of The Old Oak, the village’s last pub? This intense drama by the director, winner of two Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, starts from these questions: in 2006 for “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” and in 2016 with “I, Daniel Blake”. Born in 1936, Loach continues to propose an angry, militant cinema, always on the side of the least, capable of shaking and making us reflect. We have already seen many of the narrative dynamics of the film, but the overall design is still moving and so passionate as to hide some limitations that are can be found here and there during the narrative. If it were truly the last film of his career, it would truly be a worthy end to a filmography of capital importance.