By Chris Kriofske
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Lucrecia Martel
Starring: Daniel Giménez Cacho | Juan Minujín | Lola Dueñas | Mariana Nunes | Matheus Nachtergaele | Nahuel Cano
Country: argentina, brazil, dominican_republic, france, lebanon, mexico, netherlands, portugal, spain, switzerland, united_states
Year: 2018
Running time: 115
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3409848/reference
Chris says: “Apart from her debut feature LA CIENAGA, all of Lucrecia Martel’s films have left me cold and damn if I can pinpoint why. As a big fan of stuff like Tarkovsky’s STALKER, it’s not like I abhor slow cinema; I just feel a disconnect, something in her narrative approach that prevents me from giving myself over to whatever she’s putting across. This one, centered on the titular Spanish magistrate in an 18th century South American colony is beautifully shot and laced with mordant humor but it seems to just circle and circle without going anywhere—that is, at first, for something genuinely shocking happens in the last fifteen minutes. In retrospect, the film had been building to that moment, if obliquely, and I’d bet a second viewing would make this clearer. I can’t say ZAMA suddenly clicked with me at that point, but I admit it jolted me into attentiveness and raised my grade a notch.”