Zama

(Lucrecia Martel, Argentina 2018, 115 min., DCP, Spanish w/subtitles)

Lucrecia Martel | Rochester Premiere. In this surreal period piece based on Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 novel, Lucrecia Martel turns her lens from present-day Salta, Argentina, to Paraguay’s colonial past. Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) is an eighteenth-century magistrate of the Spanish Crown who, because of a law discriminating against officers born in South America, has stagnated in his career. Still, he endlessly awaits word from the king for a transfer that never arrives, all the while surrounded by hot, stifling air and maintaining power through bloody exploitation of indigenous and enslaved people. Zama and his desire to leave are the ties that bind together disparate scenes and events, and Martel’s masterful use of color and sound weave together a picture of colonialism infused with absurdity.