It was way too hot to paint today so we watched a movie in a nice, dark, cool room. The movie was called La Cienega. It’s a portrait of a very strange family in Argentina. The movie includes middle aged, leather-skinned drunks, wild, untamed children, wild, untamed dogs, lots of water, thunderstorms, guns, machetes, dirty swimming pools, bar fights, racism, death, and bazaar accidents. What a crazy movie. A great portrait of a completely disfunctional Argentinian family in a severe entropic state. Crazy movie. Beautiful cinematography and wonderful interwoven plots. Lots of interesting use of symbolism (dogs, water, dragging chairs, skin, telephones, ice).
Favorite story from the movie (don’t read this if you want to see it). This is from memory so it’s not exact.
One day a woman found a sick, dirty dog on the street. She took it home and cleaned it up. The next day she came home to find all three of her cats gone and the dog’s mouth covered in blood. She took the dog to the vet and said “I think my dog ate my cats.” The doctor took an axe and cut the dog right in half. She noticed it had two rows of sharp teeth. “This is no dog” said the doctor. “It’s an Egyptian(?) rat dog”.
La Cienega (The Swamp) by Lucrecia Martel
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