Lucrecia Martel's directorial debut, a Berlin Film Festival winner, is a terrific picture, even though it's pretty difficult to watch.  La Cienaga, which translates into The Swamp, is about a large family in northwest Argentina who gets together when their matriarch is injured.  There isn't much introduction to any of the film's 15 characters, which is somewhat frustrating because a couple of them are damn hard to tell apart.  Instead, Martel slowly lets things unfold without much explanation.  It's kind of like going to your partner's parent's house on Christmas and not knowing who anyone is or who's related to whom.

The most impressive scene in La Cienaga might be its first, which shows what I will politely refer to as a zombie pool party.  The in-ground pool itself is a thick, soupy mess and the corpses around it slouch in lounge chairs like invertebrates.  When Mecha (Graciela Borges) arises and stumbles across the concrete on her way to get a refill, she trips and lands on the wine glasses she was carrying, resulting in some deep lacerations.  But none of the zombies move, despite the coppery smell of blood in the air (that's because zombies eat brains, stupid!).  Martel's camera work here is fantastic, using a shaky handheld to make Mecha's dizzying fall something to remember.

Soon enough, there's a flurry of activity, prompted by Mecha's children and servants.  Mecha is whisked away to a hospital in La Cienaga, a nearby city where her cousin Tali (Mercedes Morán) and her family live.  When Tali learns about Mecha's injuries, her kin heads to the family's decaying country estate in La Mandragora.  These two branches of the family tree haven't spent much time together in recent years and, like most family get-togethers, things don't always go smoothly.

It's hard to even begin explaining the problems.  For starters, Mecha is a fall-down drunk, and now that she's bedridden, she's afraid she'll rot away like her mother did.  Mecha's husband Gregorio (Martín Adjemián) is just as much of a lush, causing their 15-year-old daughter Momi (Sofia Bertolotto) to develop a disturbingly close relationship with one of the estate's servants, Isabel (Andrea López).  Young Joaquín (Diego Baenas) spends the entire film hunting in the mountainous woods that surround La Mandragora, even though he's already missing an eye (no word on whether he, like so many mothers have warned, shot his own eye out).

Tali's family isn't much better off.  She wants to go to Bolivia to do back-to-school shopping, but her husband Rafael (Daniel Valenzuela) refuses to let her go alone.  Little Luciano (Sebastián Montagna) has a huge gash on his leg, a stray tooth growing out of the roof of his mouth and an intense fear of African rats after hearing an urban legend.  Beautiful Agustina (Noelia Bravo Herrera) doesn't seem to have much wrong with her, but she could be Momi's twin, which just makes everything confusing.  There are more kids and more serious problems, but I think you get the idea.

La Cienaga is set in February, right before Carnival (which, according to Tali, brings nothing but problems), a hot, sticky time of the year for the southern hemisphere.  The close, cramped quarters do nothing but make everybody lazy and pissed off.  Martel's fly-on-the-wall style might remind some of the Dogme 95 aesthetic, and it's a real shock to learn most of La Cienaga's acting talent had no acting experience (especially the kids, who were just residents of the villages where Martel filmed).  It's a gritty, accomplished work that will ultimately pay off if you can sort out the characters and their stories.

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