Director: Milagros Mumenthaler
Writer: Milagros Mumenthaler
Stars: Isabel Aime Gonzalez-Sola, Esteban Bigliardi, Ernestina Gatti
Synopsis: During a business trip to Geneva, Lina’s impulsive decision leads to perilous consequences. Back in Buenos Aires, she tries to bury her secret, but the dark past she left behind resurfaces to threaten her current life.
It can be hard to depict a character’s inner life and thoughts visually. Sometimes a running monologue or a voiceover narration will help the audience along, but these devices, if used poorly, can be more of a hindrance to the flow of a film than helping with our understanding of a character. A silent, action oriented sequence can, if done well, give us everything we need without hand feeding us too much detail too early. The Currents is a film that is heavily reliant on a visual language to help us understand Lina’s (Isabel Amie Gonzalez-Sola) thoughts and choices.
The film presents a difficult and ethereal concept to understand before we are given something concrete to grasp on. Much of the silent first sequence feels impenetrable. That veil over the audience’s eyes keeps us at arms length through much of the film. It feels frustrating at times when you think you have an answer and then the motivations of the characters seem to shift within a blink and seemingly without a reason why. It’s hard to understand why writer and director Milagros Mumenthaler wrote the film this way. Until the end, that is.
The intelligence of Mumenthaler’s storytelling is in her ability to confound. Nothing in The Currents is ever obvious or quite like anything else. It’s a story and plot that reveals itself slowly, sometimes painfully slowly. Taken as a whole, though, when the veil of the mystery is fully lifted, the film has a grand design that, if revealed earlier, wouldn’t have had the same impact. Mumenthaler is strategic with her slow burn. She gets us to the end precisely when she means to and not a second sooner.
This comes through in her direction as well. What we see and how we see it is as controlled as the clues in dialogue. It feels like we see our clues about two scenes before we know they’re clues. Lina sits in her car outside a shop, watching a woman struggle with her security gate. Just a few scenes later, we meet the woman, Amalia (Jazmin Carballo), who knows much more than we do about Lina and her past. Lina’s daydreams about Julia (Ernestina Gatti) and Ines (Claudia Sanchez) reveal different aspects of Lina’s psyche and current confusion. All of this to express and not fully explain Lina’s burden.
There is not only a veil on the film, but a weight to it. We are feeling through what we see that Lina is struggling with the gravity of something. Something about her life has gone awry and she can’t seem to pull herself out of a tailspin. This comes through not only visually, but auditorily. The sound of The Currents, interpreted by Mumenthaler and sound editor Federico Esquerro, is invasive. It cuts in giving us the sounds of rain, running water, or an annoying tablet app, taking our attention as well as Lina’s. It’s a great touch on the mystery and becomes the greatest “aha moment” when much of the mystery is revealed. The sound is almost as good as the lead performance.
As Lina, Isabel Amie Gonzalez-Sola is captivating. She does so much with so little dialogue. You can see the tension in her body language, the thoughtfulness in her eyes, and the internal ache along each part of her face. Gonzalez-Sola is able to deftly convey Lina’s internal struggles and guides us to answers through her choices. She is brilliant and makes the film richer with her presence.
The Currents is a struggle to get into. The slow burn of the script will turn many off. Yet, the answers to the questions and the revelation of the mystery is well worth the struggle. This is a movie you stick with so you can have the experience of it sticking with you. It’s hard to want to stay, but hard to look away once it has you.
