La quietud - The Quietude

Directed by Pablo Trapero

Starring: Martina Gusman, Bérénice Bejo, Edgar Ramírez, Joaquín Furriel, Isidoro Tolcachir

Year: 2018

Country: Argentina

Review Author: Roberto Matteucci

Click here for Italian Version

"They have wrinkles, their hair falls out, but they're always beautiful."

The political phenomenon of Peronism was born in Argentina at the end of the Second World War. The founder was the president Juan Domingo Perón. Peronism gathered many different conceptions, ideologies, followers, ideas.

The popularity of Peronism was fluctuating and unstable.

In 1974 Isabel Peròn was appointed the president of Argentina, she had been the third wife of Juan Perón.

With Isabel the country suffered a hard conflict between the two souls of Peronism: the right and the left wings. Progressive trade unionists, intellectuals and politicians suffered severe repression.

The most serious problem was the terrible economic situation:

"... however, they were unable to control the rapid deterioration of the Argentine economy. Inflation in February 1976 rose to 566% throwing the country into the abyss. " (1)

The social and economic crisis ended with Isabel's arrest, in 1976. The order came from the army led by General Rafael Videla.

The junta systematically applies:

"... repression of all the alleged opponents of the new regime, applying the terrorist method of torture and physical elimination of the adversaries through kidnappings perpetrated by the secret police. The "desaparecidos" phenomenon rose exponentially during the regime. There is no exact number of disappearances but it is estimated between 9,000 to 30,000 victims. The organizational command of the kidnappings was ESMA, the application school of the Buenos Aires army. It was also one of the most notorious opposition detention centres. " (1)

Culturally in Argentina, the processing of military tyranny is not over, although it fell in 1983. Similarly in Chile, Argentine artists are unable to free themselves from that tragic moment, limiting their intellectual ability.

The Argentine director Pablo Trapero presented the film El clan at the Venice International Film Festival in 2015.

He returned in 2018 with La quietud - The Quietude.

La quietud starts in a car driven by a lady. She listens to the French song Le rempart by Vanessa Paradis. A non-causal song, there is a symbolic link with the story: the translation of rempart from French language is bastion.

Warm sun illuminates the scene, the car runs parallel to a river. The car stops, beautiful woman goes down, close-up and then subjective from behind. It is La quietud, the amazing fazenda in which the events are set. It is a fascinating dwelling.

It is surrounded by greenery, in front there is a lush and well-kept garden. The villa is on one floor, long, with two symmetrical structures, painted in natural colour. The walls have large windows.

The woman is Mia and the parents live in the mansion. Eugenia, the sister, lives in Paris instead, has not returned home for years.

The father is an elderly lawyer. He has a heart attack amid an interrogatory with investigators. He is transferred to intensive care.

The illness pushes Eugenia to return immediately to Argentina.

The sisters and their respective husbands/boyfriends will form a fatal unit. Altogether, nobody excluded, the members will trigger a bomb full of infamy, exhibiting the inadequacy of the group.

So much is beautiful the villa, so perfidious and disgusting is the family.

Two images – the house and family – are the allegory of a human and social message. Because La quietud is not a foreign object but actually the cause of this slanderous tragedy.

The first theme is personal and introspective, as must be the domestic dimension built on a drama.

The second one is a political element, which imposes a social vision of narration.

The metaphor is obvious, the family is the Argentine society during the military dictatorship:

"Our characters pretend that the past does not exist, but a seemingly intimate story becomes the painful history of an entire country." (2)

The author uses the same subjects in El clan, with some substantial differences.

Trapero said:

"The Clan was a patriarchal film, this time I overturned the point of view, the film is dominated by a matriarchy. As with El Clan, the family of La quietud is also full of secrets and mysteries to hide and also, in this case, the film is full of violence but silent, they are two complementary films ". (2)

In El clan, Arquímedes Puccio is the patriarch of a family committed to kidnapping and illegal activities, up to extreme violence. He gave rules and roles and no one could escape, mostly the marginalized women.

The quietud has a similar subject but matriarchal one. Esmeralda is the mother. She is an elegant old lady. In her close-up she smokes a cigarette with a mouthpiece with an elegant style.

The elderly mother guides the two daughters with an authoritative and maternal tone. Establishes the topics of conversation and narrates about the cumbersome past of their lives. That old time is very heavy capable of crushing the morality of relatives.

"Muere hijo de puta" said Esmeralda when, with anger and resentment, interrupts the plug of her husband's respirator.

The most significant sequence has an exaggerated intonation but it is decisive in defining the characters.

It is the erotic description of the meeting, after many years, between Mia and Eugenia. The sisters are in bed and playing. Maybe they don't play. They exchange hugs, kisses, caresses, masturbations; they launch themselves into libidinous and exciting movements. Incest is real, an integral part of all the miseries of the family and perhaps it is not the first time.

Moreover, the two girls, singularly, have other unpleasant sexual relationships.

Human tangles overwhelm the story. The heaviness of the subject does not help the plot development also because there is a secret to be discovered.

The linearity is fragmented by a strange accident, by the exaggeration of love and sexual plots, by an excessive funeral. In the father's burial, Mia comes drunk with a glass of whiskey in her hand, angry at everything and everyone. Mia and Eugenia meet their men; it is the acme of turbid and false existence. There is no limit, the matriarchal family shows males as idiots.

The infamous secret is the story of the fazenda. In the regime time, the cruelty infected the villa. There have been deaths and disappearances. The supporters of the army have benefited financially: La quietud is one of those fruits.

The family, like current Argentina, hides millions of unspeakable mysteries, coming from the most obscene mental disorders.

By comparison, the Arquímedes Puccio clan had its own normality, since, although their actions were devious, a unity was maintained inside.

The film has dignity. Trapero is an expert director. There is some tiredness in the subject, the psychology of the characters sometimes is over the top. Esmeralda is more detailed than the daughters. They have inexpressible depths and for this reason, they are oversized.

The director loves the beauty of the fazenda, he transforms it into the main protagonist. His frames show wealth and richness, as in the abundant breakfasts.

The prosperity increases the pejorative attitude of the family quarrels.

While the father is in the hospital, the three women have a nice party.

Likewise, in the house there are memorable scuffles, scenes of jealousy, childish inventions, speeches of pathetic sex, or real encounters of uncontrolled lust, like the appointment between Mia and Vincent - Eugenia's husband - on his arrival at the airport.

Two scenes have special meaning because they recall historic and family moments.

In the first one, there are Mia and the images of an old family video about when she was young, she considers that time as idyllic. Perhaps the author wants to tell us something: is there nostalgia for the generals among the Argentines?

The second is the constant presence of the mother and her daughters, framed alternately, in their telling about their lives. Esmeralda is dominant, her physical presence is victorious, aristocratic even in her human, historical and political defeat. Is she nostalgic too?

(1) https://www.panorama.it/cultura/argentina-40-anni-fa-la-dittatura-militare/

(2) https://movieplayer.it/articoli/la-quietud-berenice-bejo-pablo-trapero-intervista-venezia-75_19468/

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