Jauja

The nineteenth century, Patagonia. Gunnar Dinesen, a Danish engineer, has come to give technical support to the Argentine army. His fifteen year old daughter Ingeborg is with him. The soldiers are conducting an operation against the native people and everything they talk about is women and killing. One night Ingeborg runs off with a young soldier. Dinesen takes a horse and goes after them. The further he rides into the desert the more direction is lost; he loses his horse, his weapon and his uniform, and does not know where he is. Lisandro Alonso directs. Viggo Mortensen plays Dinesen. The film is shown in an aspect close to square with rounded corners, a choice referring to old photographic cards. It was shown in Un Certain Regard at Cannes and won the critics' award. Mortensen also wrote the music and took part in producing it; he speaks Danish and Spanish in the film. The matter it works at is not searching but getting lost; as the film proceeds time and place grow uncertain. The last section carries the narrative somewhere else entirely and nothing is explained. Alonso's known manner holds here: long fixed takes, little dialogue and the dominance of the landscape. Who it is for: viewers who like slow cinema and open ended narratives. Who it is not for: it is very slow, almost nothing happens, and the ending is entirely uncertain.