At the peak of her career, Catalina (or Cata, or Lina, depending on what social context she is in) appears to have it all: a successful career, a tasteful modern home, a sensitive, engaged husband, and a beautiful young daughter.
We are introduced to her receiving a prestigious award at a daytime office party in Switzerland for her work in design and fashion. She is the woman of the hour, but you can instantly sense her discomfort.
She exits to the bathroom, tosses the faceted glass brick of an award into the bin, and escapes. Wandering silently around the wintry city streets, window shopping, wilfully getting lost on cobblestone streets, without any fuss, she throws herself off a bridge into the river.
Shot with a wonderfully long lens at a great distance, with Cata being little more than ant-sized in the frame, it is the first, and perhaps most powerful, scene in a film that traffics in thoughtful visual storytelling. The Currents gently brings the audience into Lina’s uncertain headspace, and lets them experience her mental state though the lens of quiet observation and integrated personal experience.
After being efficiently rescued from the icy waters by local authorities, and transported to the hospital wrapped in a gold foil heat blanket, Catalina heads back to the hotel to prepare for her flight home to Argentina. In the hotel bathroom, she discovers that she is acutely afraid of the water. She cannot shower, wash her hands, or do anything, really.
Never mining the situation for horror or humour, but still keeping things in the key of nightmare, Milagros Mumenthaler’s direction is resolute in remaining oblique, observational, and very tactile. There is something intrinsically sensual about long hair resting on fabric surfaces, being lathered with soap, or floating in the sink.
Catalina develops a rash from the lack of cleaning, and resorts to her hairdresser having to put her unconscious with anaesthetic gas to do one of life's most basic tasks: personal hygiene. The score, which often resembles Ennio Morricone’s ‘pocket watch sequences’ from A Few Dollars More, is equally effective as a low-level anxiety metronome.
The Currents is a film about fear and shame. Outside its signature and powerful opening scene, which at first appears to be about career imposters syndrome, the main focus of the film is to lean more into the mundane aspects of a working mom living in her Buenos Aires.
The Currents is a film about fear and shame. Outside its signature and powerful opening scene, which at first appears to be about career imposters syndrome, the main focus of the film is to lean more into the mundane aspects of a working mom living in her Buenos Aires.
Basic tasks become monumental, and the smallest of innocent of comments, from her husband or he daughter have the feeling of accusation and blame, or the dread of being caught out in her deceit. Refusing to confide in anyone about her irrational phobia, is eating her alive.
There are other visuals of suicide and reverie that further colour in the underlying trauma of her past. That this is made explicit, in the last act of the film the film, is kind of surprising given how confident Mumenthaler is over the course of the film in simply letting us discover the moment with Lina, and graft on what the cause might be.
There are other visuals of suicide and reverie that further colour in the underlying trauma of her past. That this is made explicit, in the last act of the film the film, is kind of surprising given how confident Mumenthaler is over the course of the film in simply letting us discover the moment with Lina, and graft on what the cause might be.
Anxieties around mothers and motherhood was not probably not a completely necessary thing to double or triple underscore, given how good the mood and narrative are at doing the work here. An obvious point of comparison is Todd Haynes' Safe, which is high praise given my opinion that it is one of the greatest indie films from 1990s America, or the opening surface-touching-ick chapter of Soderbergh's Contagion. Both of those films are tonally far more apocalyptic in execution, compared to the more grounded quietyly domestic and professional settings of The Currents.
One sequence which is a particular standout involves Cata and her daughter taking a respite in an urban lighthouse at the top of their condominium. The rotating lens bathes them both in light, reminiscent to the gold foil of the rescue blanket in Sweden.
One sequence which is a particular standout involves Cata and her daughter taking a respite in an urban lighthouse at the top of their condominium. The rotating lens bathes them both in light, reminiscent to the gold foil of the rescue blanket in Sweden.
This moment leads into a montage showing everyone in Catalina’s various social circles going about their daily lives without apprehension or impending dread, enjoying the small pleasures the city and its denizens has to offer. Is it Lina's fantasy, or is it a moment of acute extra-sensory power? It visually represents a the exceptional show-don't-tell ethos of the film.
Either way you read it, it is an extremely well done contrast to the mood of the rest of the film. The cleansing lantern suggests that despite her ongoing mental struggles, her fear that she can never go back to her normal domestic and professional life, there are, nonetheless, moments of ecstatic caress that can be a balm in the cold, modern world.
In spite of its obvious psychological hook and big-cinema opening sequence, this is a film for everyone. Slow, portentous, and dwelling on the nuts and bolts of coping with ordinary aspects of life in an extraordinary situation, at the heart of the exceptional filmmaking on display is a complex lead performance from Isabel Aimé González-Sola, who plays Lina, Cata, and Catalina in different registers.
Either way you read it, it is an extremely well done contrast to the mood of the rest of the film. The cleansing lantern suggests that despite her ongoing mental struggles, her fear that she can never go back to her normal domestic and professional life, there are, nonetheless, moments of ecstatic caress that can be a balm in the cold, modern world.
In spite of its obvious psychological hook and big-cinema opening sequence, this is a film for everyone. Slow, portentous, and dwelling on the nuts and bolts of coping with ordinary aspects of life in an extraordinary situation, at the heart of the exceptional filmmaking on display is a complex lead performance from Isabel Aimé González-Sola, who plays Lina, Cata, and Catalina in different registers.
The Currents respects and rewards its audience in a myriad of ways that I found invigorating. It is better than a cold plunge.