While many films through the summer movie season will boast of their epic scope, we imagine the results will pale in comparison to a fall festival highlight that is now arriving in theaters. As a producer of Extraordinary Stories and La Flor, Laura Citarella is well-versed in telling tales on a large canvas. Her latest feature––the two-part, four-hour Trenque Lauquen––will open on April 21 at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center and April 29 at LA’s American Cinematheque. Ahead of the release from Cinema Guild, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the new trailer.
Here’s the synopsis: The search for a missing woman unspools in two unexpectedly interconnected parts in Laura Citarella’s playful new feature. The missing woman is Laura (Laura Paredes), a biologist cataloging plant species in and around the Argentinean city of Trenque Lauquen. The men searching for her: Rafael, her boyfriend, and Ezequiel, a coworker who has come to mean more to her in recent days. But in order to uncover the truth of Laura’s disappearance, a profusion of mysteries must be explored. There’s the question of love letters hidden in books in the local library, the discovery of a new species of flower, and then there’s the mysterious being, rumored to be haunting the lake at the center of town.”
“This film is part of a larger idea: a group of films where the same character lives different lives in
different towns in the province of Buenos Aires. The first film of the saga is called Ostende and
it’s my first film as a director. The character—Laura—is always performed by Laura Paredes.
And the director, myself, also Laura. Perhaps too many Lauras,” said Citarella.” “But what crosses the whole saga is a central idea: a female Sherlock Holmes of sorts lost in towns, keener for adventures than anything else. A film composed by different kind of women. Women who chase women. Female detectives. Female scientists. Women that, for different reasons, run away. The cartographies of books as maps to live. Maternity. The conquest of territory. Men in love. The nobility of some men. The idiocy of the same men. The bureaucracy and the flowers. The town. The humans. The animals. The plants. The unknown.”
Zhuo-Ning Su said in his review, “There are many films that start with a bang and many that climax at the end. There are fewer that wow with a deliberately calibrated, orgiastic halfway mark. This (among many other qualities) makes Argentinian director Laura Citarella’s beguiling, shape-shifting epic Trenque Lauquen something of a rarity. The first half of the 250-minute film (also screening in two parts at festivals, which is perfectly doable and would probably lead to a different viewing experience) concludes with a wordless scene of contemplation that abruptly cuts to a title sequence for the ages. This brutal transition comes as a surprise—not only because nothing in the two hours you’ve just spent has prepared you for the mean glare of strobe light and nasty electro beat accompanying the credits list. It also feels like a promise, a dare: “Think that’s enough weirdness for one movie? We’re just getting started.” However fatigued or perplexed one may be at this point, the sweet kick of adrenaline from this madly confident interlude will send pulses racing like the best of cinema does. But let’s start again from the top.”
See our exclusive trailer premiere below.
Trenque Lauquen opens on April 21 at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center and April 29 at LA’s American Cinematheque, and will expand.