Retracing ripples: water, idleness, and guilt in Lucrecia Martel’s Salta trilogy

Suarez, Marta ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7205-0339 (2024) Retracing ripples: water, idleness, and guilt in Lucrecia Martel’s Salta trilogy. In: Alternative Voices: Artistic Mediations on Female Subjectivities in Spain and Latin America (1920-2020). Palgrave McMillan. (In Press)

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the functions of water in Lucrecia Martel’s feature films La Ciénaga/The Swamp (2001), La niña santa/The Holy Girl (2004), and La mujer sin cabeza/The Headless Woman (2008), dubbed the ‘Salta trilogy’ for the location in which they are set. The chapter posits that water operates in four distinctive ways: to signify wealth and difference, to allude to repetitions for underscoring the reproduction of behaviours that negate progression; to evoke tensions between nature and a desire to contain it; and to hint at the possibility of cleansing and renewal, which is often truncated. These ideas combine to support readings that delineate class difference and are epitomised in the figure of the middle-aged and middle-class woman, whose actions and environment contribute to outline a society strained by historical and unresolved tensions derived from the period of the Dirty War and the subsequent attempts to heal the nation.