An exploration of those internal impulses we don’t always understand ourselves and the impact that they can have on our lives, filmmaker Milagros Mumenthaler‘s third feature film, “The Currents,” follows Lina (Isabel Aimé González Sola), an Argentinian designer in the aftermath of a drastic decision. While in Switzerland accepting an award, she flees the ceremony and soon finds herself with the urge to jump into a frozen river. Surviving the fall, she heads back to her home in Buenos Aires with a debilitating fear of water, something she does not share with her husband (Esteban Bigliardi).
Growing increasingly isolated, Lina slowly distances herself from everything she once held dear—her career, her husband, and even her 5-year-old daughter, Sofía (Emma Fayo Duerte). Will she ever find her way back?
Born in Argentina in 1977, Mumenthaler was raised in Switzerland, where her family immigrated during the country’s military dictatorship. Mumenthaler has directed numerous short films and three acclaimed feature films, all of which, in one way or another, explore the intimacy and interiority of women’s lives.
Director Milagros Mumenthaler (credit Kino Lorber)Her debut feature film, “Back to Stay,” about sisters grieving the loss of the grandmother who raised them, won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2011. Her follow-up feature, “The Idea of a Lake,” explores the fragmentation of memory through the story of a photographer who finds a photograph of her father, which inspires her to revisit his mysterious disappearance during the dictatorship.
Her latest film, “The Currents,” premiered at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival and went on to screen at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and the Chicago International Film Festival. In her three-star review of the film, Sheila O’Malley writes that “‘The Currents’’s willingness to suggest, rather than show, to create echoes rather than draw verbal conclusions is the film’s main source of power.”
For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke to Mumenthaler over Zoom and via a translator about the image that inspired her film, her exploration of dissociation and of navigating our many selves, her use of music by Gustav Holst, and her making of films that generate questions rather than offering answers.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This is such an emotional film, and I wondered what the initial kernel of inspiration was. Was there a question, an emotion, an image, or a feeling that you developed this story from?
At the beginning of this project, there was a picture, an image where I was going along the edge of the Rhône in Geneva, and all of a sudden, I imagined a woman throwing herself into the freezing water. It was an image that stuck with me for some time. It started out as an image that raised many questions about who this woman was, whether she was aware of what she had done, or whether her body had spoken for her.
There’s something very intimate about working so much based on the character herself, putting me in her shoes or in her skin, and trying to be very perceptive and to really see where this condition she’s in takes her. Being actively adrift. I think that turns it into a very sensorial movie where you can really feel what the character sees or hears.
It very much feels like a film that’s trying to represent the feeling of disassociation. Did you research disassociation, or was this more of an intuitive exploration of that process and way of being?
There was a bit of both. There was a formal process in which I worked with a psychoanalyst throughout the filmmaking process, and I also leaned on readings more closely connected to neurology and psychology. But beyond that, I think there is something where, for anyone, the film’s character has a more existential conflict that becomes more evident after the event that puts a life in danger. All of us can ask ourselves, are there other possible lives for us? Can we just split off? Disappear? Or reinvent ourselves?
Those questions are very much at the forefront right now. Lina is clearly someone who asks herself all those questions and even allows herself to physically go through that process. But she also has a very important anchor in her daughter. I think motherhood is what keeps her grounded, what keeps her present, and ultimately leads her to stay.
For her work and her family, she is known as Lina, but with her friend, she is Cata. She is at once two different people. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that character’s attempt to blend those two lives, and whether you think it’s possible for someone to be multiple people at once.
In the film, she is Cata, but Cata refers more to a past life, and Lina refers to her current life. Lina is someone who has moved between social classes. I think that in order to exist, she has to leave Cata behind and transform herself into Lina. So, for me, one of her biggest crises has to do with a sense of belonging, and how she doesn’t really feel like either Cata or Lina. So deep down, the question is, who is she really?
I do think we can all be different people. I think each of us changes depending on where we are and what circles we move around in. Because in all of them, we are perceived differently as well. So, in that dynamic of relationships, we change. You are never the same person within your family because assigned and unassigned roles make us act or speak in certain ways; perhaps in another environment, we become different people with different roles.
We don’t always occupy the same role in every space. We always present ourselves differently, or we always can, and we appear differently as well. And while all of this is going on, inside we’re still another person entirely, and I think the film talks a lot about precisely that tension between the objective outward appearance and the intimate subjective inner self.
The Current (Kino Lorber)You mentioned her daughter as an anchor for her, but obviously, her mother is another big factor in psychology and is maybe pulling her, like you said, back to her previous life. That tension she has with her mom might be holding her back a bit. Her mother and her daughter are such different anchors, both pulling her in such different directions at the end.
From the very beginning, there is this sense that, in some way, all roads lead back to her mother. When she sees the embroidery, and when she gets lost in that theatre where they’re doing the photoshoot, or later, of the lighthouse as well, when we find ourselves in front of that house without yet knowing what that house is as a viewer. Every path leads to the mother, in a way. Her mother is a bit like the seed of this story, or at least of what Lina is going through. In order for Lina to exist for herself, she had to flee from her mother’s house. When you have a mother who is so fragile and so consumed by her mental illness, there is an abandonment of the people who are near to her.
Lina, in that sense, returns to her mother’s house to seek answers. I don’t think she finds them there, but the place she goes in search of answers ultimately affirms her in her own motherhood and allows her to stay beside her daughter without repeating what her mother did. She differentiates herself. On this note, many times in family relationships, even when we can be very critical of the relationship or family dynamics, those reference points remain, and we involuntarily end up falling into the same behaviors and attitudes as the people we may have critiqued.
I wanted to ask about the use of Gustav Holst’s “Venus, The Bringer of Peace.” It’s such a beautiful, calming piece of music, which contrasts with the very chaotic interiority Lina is going through at this moment. How did you land on that piece of music?
The moments when the “Venus” piece is used for the music, we knew the piece needed to have certain characteristics, and first it had to be something that moves you forward, a theme or a piece that feels like it’s going somewhere. Because some music is more repetitive or more rhythmic, while other pieces carry you toward a destination, so to speak.
It also had to contain a certain fairy-tale-like quality. Lina, in this active drifting state that she’s in throughout the film, has something very playful about her. In the sense of giving herself up to the experience, surrendering herself to the experience, to see what happens. To me, these elements represent Lina’s state very well. There’s tension because she doesn’t know, right? Just as her body suddenly spoke and threw her into the freezing water, she didn’t know what might happen next.
There’s also nostalgia, because I think that Lina is a deeply nostalgic character throughout the film. It’s a representation of how she sees the world. So you feel that nostalgia when she’s looking at the embroidery or watching the woman make the corset. These are all activities that come from a totally different rhythm of life, very different from her work, that chaotic, frantic pace of her everyday life. I think that Lina carries that nostalgia within herself.
Then there is the playful side. She’s not trying to find a concrete answer to the question “Well, what exactly is wrong with me?” She isn’t looking for a definitive diagnosis. She lets herself be carried away, and there’s something playful in that. A kind of “let’s see what happens.” But then there’s also a side of courage to it.
So when we started looking for the music, I had all of those elements in the forefront of my mind. We would start listening to pieces, and we say, “Well, not this one because it doesn’t have that fairytale feeling,” or “Not this one” because it lacks something else. When we heard “Venus” by Gustav Holst, it was perfect. It reflected Lina’s emotional state exactly.
The Current (Kino Lorber)There are so many different interpretations that you can take from this film, depending on your own perspective on the character, on your own perspective on modern life. Do you have any hopes for what people might take away for their own lives after watching your film?
I don’t know if I’d say I want people to take something specific away, but I do think cinema should be a place for reflection or for carrying something with you afterward. Not necessarily forever, but at least for a little while, leaving you, as a viewer, asking yourself some questions. So that’s the spirit in which I make my films.
My films ask for an active, involved viewer. Not in the sense that they’re demanding something from the audience, but in the sense of leaving space for the viewer to do something with what they’ve seen, instead of giving them every single answer. I don’t want the film to end and for it to simply be “Oh, okay. That’s what it meant. That was the message. That’s it.”
Deep down, we are mysterious people, and there aren’t answers for everything. I like that we have mystery inside ourselves. Mystery has always been part of humanity, and I think it is important to make films that generate questions rather than answers or conclusions.
Are there any filmmakers who are women or films that are made by women that have either inspired you, or that you think are really cool and you think other readers should seek out?
For many years, while working on this film, I made a conscious decision to read women authors. So, in some way, the film and I are defined by the stories women tell. Then, specifically for this project, it was about immersing myself in a world closely connected to how women perceive it through literature.
But there is also an American director that I really like, Kelly Reichardt. I like her way of working, where there is always something almost Chekovian underneath, something quietly happening beneath the surface, but you don’t really know what exactly. She manages to create tension throughout her films like that, and I find that really interesting and fascinating.
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