"An age arrives in which you consider where you are and what you have done with your life"

BarcelonaLina, a fashion professional who has just collected an award in Geneva, shrugs off the trophy as if it were a nuisance and begins to wander through the city's solitary streets until, suddenly, she throws herself into the icy waters of the Rhône. That's how magnetic and powerful the opening sequence of Las corrientes is, the third film by Milagros Mumenthaler (Abrir puertas y ventanas, La idea de un lago), which the Argentine director conceived precisely from this first image of a woman throwing herself into the river. “It came to mind right there, in Geneva, where I grew up and have family – she explains–. The image provoked many questions in me, and I tried to follow them in an intuitive way”.

Lina emerges from the river, soaking wet, and returns to Buenos Aires as if nothing had happened, but something has happened: since the incident, she is unable to go near, feel, or even touch running water. Taking a shower is, of course, out of the question, and her hair begins to rebel, an external symptom of a deeper unease. “When a story has an element as strong as the act of throwing oneself into the water, a mystery is generated – says Mumenthaler–. What happened to the water? You might think it's a phobia, but it seems to me that she also has a fear of what she experienced, a kind of flirtation with death, a letting go that reminds her of physical sensations from childhood”.

The character study proposed by Mumenthaler activates the spectator's fascination mechanisms through an elliptical script and staging that is always at the service of visually translating the protagonist's inner turbulence. It is inevitable to think of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), especially when the images and music merge in a poetic embrace. Las corrientes is a film that enters through the eyes, where all elements of the frame matter and signify. But its great asset is the magnetic presence of Isabel Aimé González Sola, who traps the viewer in the abyss of her eyes and unfolds the mystery and fragility of an Antonioni character. What the film hints at through a print by Francisco Goya titled Nobody Knows Oneself, the actress expresses through a restrained gesture or an absent gaze. “We did a very physical job with Isabel, from her voice and breathing to the way she says words and the way she positions herself – explains the director–. Beyond the vulnerable situation in which we meet her, she is a hardworking woman, a boss who, with great effort, left her past behind and has imposed herself in a world that does not belong to her, it was necessary to work on all aspects of the character”.

Identity crisis

The film follows Lina's erratic course through her reunion with her husband and daughter and with work, and her attempts to manage her fear of running water. A feeling of strangeness always hovers over her, a dissonance that eventually reveals itself as the fracture between her family origins and the perfect woman, mother, wife, and professional she has become. There is an evident element of social displacement, but above all a profound identity crisis. “The past always catches up with you, especially when there have been absences and abandonment – Mumenthaler points out –. It’s difficult to go through life like Lina, leaving everything behind as if nothing happened, without consequences. This also manifests in her difficulty with motherhood. The things that have happened to us mark and define us. It’s impossible to escape the past, because it leaves a mark on us”.

The same director is not unaware of fractured identities: her parents fled the Argentine military dictatorship for Switzerland, and she did not return to her country until she went there to study at university. She too has been a foreign body in Argentina. “These things end up seeping into the scripts you write, but you don't think about it directly – Mumenthaler says –. Simply, you reach an age where you question where you are and what you have done with your life. Everyone wonders at some point if it is possible to start anew or if you would do the same thing again, but life is one and you have to accept the decisions you have made”.

Las corrientes was financed, in part, with public grants from the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA), an option that right now seems unviable in Milei's Argentina, which has drastically cut the resources of the body that manages public resources for Argentine cinema. “Now, 10% of the films that were shot before are being shot – Mumenthaler points out –. The grants were not very high either and Argentina is very expensive now, so the situation is a bit desolate. We all wonder how we are going to move forward”. Despite the dark outlook, the director is already working on a new project. “There is still a long way to go before I can present it and ask for grants, but what is very clear is that it will be much more difficult and the competition will be fierce. If we add the emergence of platforms, it is a complicated time for cinema in general, a hinge moment to reflect and see what and how cinema is supposed to be now”.