A portrait of the decline of the Argentine social classes in the abyss of the socioeconomic recession, but whose nucleus is populated by sterile characters and anodyne episodes of daily life. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/10 | Sep 1, 2023

... This film digs under a surface of normality that can only be apparent and ephemeral. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 28, 2023

With a mobile, up-close camera as entrenched as a member of the family, [Lucrecia] Martel casts an acerbic eye on its expressions of gender, race, and class.

| Aug 17, 2022

That opening sequence is mind-blowing. An incredible and compelling filmmaking approach from Lucrecia Martel.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 2, 2022

La Ciénaga does what cinema at its best can do: It reveals a universe we've never even imagined and then gets us to look differently at both the society and medium we'd underestimated.

| Feb 28, 2020

An early image of a suntanned chest impaled by the shards of a broken wine glass becomes an emblem of Martel's ability to draw blood from her subject matter.

| Apr 15, 2019

The air of stultifying decadence is captured to a T by Martel. It's a reminder that as well as being a brilliant technician and visual artist, she is an exemplary writer too.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2018

...the air is equally thick with boredom and dread.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 29, 2017

Every shot is dense with life, with children and animals running in and out, yet the movie is highly focused, a small masterpiece.

| Apr 6, 2017

Martel doesn't try to connect the dots with typical continuity editing either, opting instead to focus on textures and fleeting movements

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 29, 2015

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 30, 2006

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 1, 2005

the most remarkable debut in recent experience

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 2, 2005

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 3, 2003

| Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 19, 2003

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 10, 2003

"La Cienaga" literally means the swamp, and the film feels it: a hothouse atmosphere of heat waves and rainstorms and the mired feeling of life stuck in a social bog.

| Original Score: A | Mar 8, 2002

Experiencing this film ultimately becomes as stimulating as watching metal rust.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Feb 15, 2002

[Martel's] technique works, often brilliantly, in depicting the hyper-real, unsettling atmosphere of a sometimes normal, potentially violent, mostly sick family.

| Jan 11, 2002