The Cinema of Lucrecia Martel

The cinema of Lucrecia Martel is a comprehensive analysis of the work of the acclaimed Argentine director, whose elusive and elliptical features have garnered worldwide recognition since her 2001 debut La ciénaga. Examining these films alongside lesser-known shorts, the book situates Martel's work in relation to trends in recent Argentine filmmaking, as well as international art and horror cinema.
Through discussions of the interventions made by Martel's films in matters of class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and Argentine history and politics, the book makes a case for her cinema as deeply political, showing how its creation of uncertainty and doubt allows for glimpses of alternative realities. In this reading, the films can be seen as sites of radical optimism and potentiality, offering new kinds of cinematic pleasure, and as parodic and camp in their treatment of cinematic codes, especially those relating to femininity. This is linked to a broader queer sensibility, which informs the films' politics and aesthetics.
Bringing together traditional hermeneutic approaches with an understanding of film as material object, this book shows how Martel's cinema can be understood as an experiment with perception, and how the films break away from the sedimented thinking of dominant cinematic forms, thereby challenging the viewer's perceptual capacities. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Latin American, women's and queer cinemas.