THE STORY – While on a work trip in Switzerland, where she’s being fêted for her storied fashion career, designer Lina plunges herself, without warning, into an icy winter lake. After surviving the shocking ordeal, Lina returns to her hometown of Buenos Aires, yet a transformation has taken place within her, and she finds it impossible to readjust to her former life as a wife, mother, and artist, distancing herself from her husband and career.
THE CAST – Isabel Aimé González-Sola, Esteban Bigliardi, Emma Fayo Duarte, & Ernestina Gatti
THE TEAM – Milagros Mumenthaler (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 104 Minutes
“Nothing is original,” Lina (Isabel Aimé González-Sola) says to her assistant, Julia (Ernestina Gatti), late in Milagros Mumenthaler’s new film “The Currents”. “What matters is the perspective you bring.” She’s right. It shouldn’t matter that the premise of “The Currents” doesn’t overflow with originality, as long as Mumenthaler brings a unique, insightful perspective to it. Unfortunately, nearly everything about the film feels stale, from its premise to its chosen symbolism. Thankfully, González-Sola’s compelling lead performance, along with Mumenthaler’s striking use of music and strong visual sensibility, keep the film engaging despite its lack of interesting perspective.
Lina is all smiles as she accepts an award for her work as a fashion designer in Switzerland, but inside her, something has shifted. After dumping the award in the trash, she ditches the party and wanders around the city until something captures her eye in a shop window. This doesn’t help her mood, though, as the next thing she does is climb over the railing of a bridge and jump into the icy cold water below. This wordless opening acts as a transfixing prologue to the story that follows, drawing you in as Lina wanders around seemingly half-present. It feels like anything could happen, but once she arrives back home, things become more mundane for both Lina and the audience. While Lina clearly loves her job, her husband (Esteban Bigliardi), and her daughter (Emma Fayo Duarte), she’s distant from all of them. She has become so afraid of water that she’s stopped showering, which has led to a rash growing under her hair. As Lina grows increasingly withdrawn, abandoning her duties and staring into the middle distance, we are left to wonder: What caused all this? And will Lina ever find her way back to herself?
“The Currents” is merely the latest in a long line of films about working mothers breaking down under the pressure of trying to do/have it all, and it adheres to the formula of those films pretty well. Lina has a nice life – she and her devoted husband are well-off and have good sex, daughter Sofia is lovably precocious (and easily distracted by an iPad game), and she has a job creating her own fashion line – but after the incident in Switzerland, nothing in her life gives her the same happiness that it used to. That this is all related to her own mommy issues is made clear in a heavy-handed scene where Sofia pointedly asks whether Lina’s mother cooked or got food from a caterer, like they do. It’s no surprise when Lina visits her mother in their old home in the film’s third act, and no surprise that they haven’t spoken in years, at least in part because her mother isn’t all there mentally. It’s no surprise that many people around her notice how strangely she’s acting and ask if she needs help, which she naturally refuses.
Despite the familiarity of these story beats, however, Mumenthaler directs the film with great sensitivity, creating some genuinely beautiful, moving moments. A late-film scene set at the top of a lighthouse makes great use of the space’s expressive lighting, as does the aforementioned scene in Lina’s mother’s home. The sound mix puts you right in Lina’s headspace, with muted, watery overlays that make everything sound far away and muffled, like she’s in a cocoon trying to keep everything else out. Mumenthaler also makes particularly effective use of music, drawing you in when it plays and keeping intrigue high at the moments when it cuts out.
Intrigue fills the film, with the mystery of what exactly Lina saw in that Swiss shop window hanging over everything. Even from the start, González-Sola’s performance provides enough for several films, filling in the screenplay’s many gaps with deep feeling and emotional complexity. Even when Lina’s actions may not make sense to the audience, González-Sola burrows so deeply into her skin that she never strikes a false note. She keeps the film afloat amidst the screenplay’s many tropes, providing as much specificity as she can while still keeping the film as oblique as Mumenthaler wants it.
Mumenthaler’s style, technically sound though it may be, ends up flattening everything. Lina’s matter-of-fact, impulsive jump off the bridge gives the film an initial jolt that’s as difficult for the audience to shake as it is for Lina, giving it an anything-can-happen tension that holds your interest even when the pacing lags. Unfortunately, nothing really comes of that tension due to the director’s European arthouse sensibility. The desire to provide no answers goes too far, leaving the film feeling like yet another iteration on a theme we’ve seen over and over again. While well-made, “The Currents” lacks the spark of originality that could make it truly outstanding.
