Size Matters: Making Films Too Long - A Breakdown of Trenque Lauquen
What really is a good story? Think about it, we leave movie theaters and late-night laptop screenings with a clear definition of whether the film’s story was “good” or “bad”, but what does this mean? For me, at least, a “good” story for a film is one that understands its merit and executes it in the time that it needs. There is a wide array of films with great merit to its concept and/or style, but fail in their pacing, and as a result, they don’t reach their true potential.
Napoleon, for example, had the opportunity to be highly regarded, but the film gets lost in its strange exploration of Napoleon Bonaparte’s romantic affairs; by the time we get to the historical tensions and the film expects its audience to care about the plot, the audience has already tuned out. However, I believe there is no better example of a film that could’ve been great but instead gets trampled by the weight of its own narrative than the Argentinian indie Trenque Lauquen. It is a film that delivers greatness across a wide variety of fields, like score, cinematography, and acting, but ultimately, it loses its audience in its indecision about whether to focus on a concrete plot or theme.
There are a myriad of aspects of Trenque Lauquen that make it a recipe for greatness. Firstly, the soundtrack is phenomenal. This film juxtaposes electric sounds, acoustic instruments, and angelic melodies in a cacophony of ear bliss. Furthermore, all the performances are brilliant. Laura Paredes as “Laura” delivers a wonderfully subdued and likeable performance, making the audience sympathetic towards her but leaving enough ambiguity to never truly understand why she makes certain decisions. The supporting cast is fantastic too; each character adds a little stroke of humanity that makes these little Argentinian towns seem lively, and most of all, real. The film presents the dark humor, the interconnectivity of extended families, and the crummy, run-down sense of classic Latin American architecture. It is rare to see a film that captures the feeling of living in Latin America so well. In addition, the cinematography, while mostly unobtrusive, tries to be original at every step that it can. There are long stretches of dialogue since a great part of this movie revolves around solving a letter correspondence mystery, so the cinematography compensates by finding creative framing choices, like frames within frames and deep foreground-midground-background distinctions. These small strokes of life give the film a pulse. If they weren’t there, it would be pretty easy to get lost in the drab color palette and the slow-paced plot. It is precisely in the storyline that the discussion surrounding this film becomes contentious. The film’s script has a beautiful and surreal wit to it, but it is also the reason why the film fails to transcend from “good” to “great”. It is the reason why it is easier to praise this film’s individual components alone, rather than the sum of its parts.
The use of the split storyline is the core issue of Trenque Lauquen. The film is centered around two storylines split by an interlude. One half centers around Chicho (Ezequiel Perri) and Laura investigating the mystery of Carmen Zuna’s disappearance while intercut with the future in which Laura herself has disappeared. The second half centers around Laura’s whereabouts after her disappearance, in which she investigates a lesbian couple hiding a supernatural organism in their house. Each storyline was quite engaging, immersing the audience into this world of conspiracies and coincidences. In particular, everything surrounding the mysterious organism was the most interesting part of the film: the blue light, the strange sounds, the uncanny confidence of the two women, and their bizarre trust in our main character. It all builds such a mystifyingly eerie atmosphere. It even ends in such a profound way, with Laura accepting she will never get concrete answers and instead drifts away into nature in a sort of existential fugue. Despite the merits of the second half, I left the movie theater asking, “what was that first half for?” The first mystery plot, while engaging, leads nowhere, with the only thematic thread tying it together to the second mystery being how Laura and Carmen Zuna’s similar disappearances. This film makes you so invested in these two stories, making you wish for some sort of tie-everything-together ending…but there is none. The problem lies in how Trenque Lauquen can’t decide what it wants to do.
Why does Trenque Lauquen do this? Why couldn’t a film with such high potential tone itself down a little bit? I truly believe this could’ve been something great, and that’s what pains me the most. When you try to explore feminism, fantasy, romance, existentialism, sexuality, mystery, thriller, horror, and so much more in just one film, you are squashed under your own weight. I wish that a longer runtime would solve this, but it simply doesn’t. Trenque Lauquen thinks it has the runtime liberties of a TV show, and tries to apply this to a feature film. As a result, the movie feels like a jumbled array of interesting ideas without feeling like a single, cohesive work of art. This could have been a modern masterpiece, but for now, we are just left with a mess. There is no expectation of a film to completely explore every nuance of its themes. In a way, I am glad a film like this exists because it serves as a warning to narrative filmmakers (especially editors) to create works that are cohesive and complete. For if we do, I believe the world of film will be stronger.