15 - The Conquest of the Uncomfortable: An Interview with Lucrecia Martel

Summary

On 20 March 2021, Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha (in Hastings, UK), Julia Kratje (in Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Paul R. Merchant (in Bristol, UK) spoke with Lucrecia Martel (in Salta, Argentina) about her career, some underexplored connections between her films, and her plans for the future.

Julia Kratje: In many interviews, you have mentioned that what lies off-camera, as regards framing and staging, is a key aspect of the composition of the mise-en-scène, which besieges, disturbs, smothers and jolts both characters and viewers. You have also spoken extensively about an environment of strangeness permeating all your work, which implies challenging the real along the lines of horror cinema or science fiction. But the sense of humour or the traits which link the films with a certain air of comedy have not been considered as closely by the audience or by the critics.

Lucrecia Martel: I have some friends who laugh a lot when they watch my movies; but, well … that's probably because these are very close friends, with whom I share codes, certain expressions, little things: it's not about the organisation of comedy as a genre, but about details which disrupt the characters’ solemnity. Many of those touches of humour are in the dialogues, but also in the scenes’ organisation in visual terms and in terms of sound. As these movies are not strident in auditory terms or in acting terms, it's hard to understand that I should say that there is humour in there. However, humour is something I care very much about, not because I want movies to have humour in them, but because the things that irk me the most, what I find most terrible, what I don't like, are the things which are ridiculous because it is unbelievable that they still work. To oppose power with solemnity, or thinking that power is solemn, is a lost cause. However, if the way in which power seems to uphold itself appears ridiculous, understanding it and finding humour in it becomes easier. It's something that happens naturally to me. However, given what the films are like, given their format and the way they are presented, it can be hard, sometimes, to perceive humour.