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Lucrecia Martel’s latest film is a portrait of colonial futility, in which an 18th century official in an out-of-the-way South American locality struggles to escape, and endure, his plight. Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel has become my favorite living director. That might sound extravagant to say about someone who has only made four features in sixteen years, but every one of her films has been a powerful and challenging work of art. The latest is called Zama , and for the first time Martel has made a period film, in other words one that doesn’t take place in the present day but in a previous era, and it’s her first adaptation from a book, the 1956 novel of the same name by Antonio de Benedetto. The film’s title character is Don Diego de Zama, an 18 th century colonial magistrate in an out-of-the-way corner of the Spanish empire, somewhere in South America. The native Indians and African slaves serve the white officials and landowners, and daily life is generally dull, hot, and uneventful. Zama has been there too long—his wife and child are across the sea, and he is desperately trying to be transferred away from this backwater so that he can be with them. The governor of the province says that he will send a letter, but first there are bureaucratic obstacles that become more and more difficult as time goes by. Zama tries to seduce a married noblewoman so that she may use her influence. She teases him but does not deliver. The frustration reaches its peak when a new governor arrives and starts treating Zama with contempt. Zama is played by Daniel Giménez Cacho, and his performance is mesmerizing. His long, careworn face betrays a rigid suppression of despair, a feeling that is nevertheless still evident. As judges go, he is on the lenient side, but his weary sense of entitlement repeatedly catches him up with the peasants and servants he encounters. They either maintain blank obedience or a kind of detached indifference to him. He’s a man who is not quite there a
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