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Filmmaker Milagros Mumenthaler was born in Argentina but raised in Switzerland; both countries figure prominently in her third feature film, The Currents. An eerie psychological drama focused on the unraveling of a woman at what should be the prime of her life, The Currents dwells on the lasting legacy of generational trauma and the fear of repeating others’ mistakes, as though fated by blood.
Taking a Plunge
When the film opens, Argentinian fashion designer Lina (Isabel Aimé González Sola) seems to be on top of the world. Beautiful and successful, with an adoring husband (Esteban Bigliardi) and daughter, she has just received a professional award in Switzerland when she’s suddenly seized with the urge to jump off a bridge into the cold water below. Lina survives the jump and returns home, but something within her has changed. Those around her cannot fail to notice, with her husband asking, “Should we talk about how weird you’re acting? It’s like you never came back.”
source: Kino Lorber
Lina’s life no longer seems fulfilling, even though she appears to have everything a woman could want. Her insecurities about not being a good enough wife and mother, in addition to having a great career, grow harder to handle, especially when her daughter asks Lina whether her mother ever cooked for her instead of just ordering catering. (In such moments, there are echoes of another recent movie about a working mother on the verge, Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, though that film unfolds at a far more frenetic pace.) She also develops a fear of water so intense that she cannot even wash her hair. Eventually, long-submerged trauma rises to the surface of Lina’s psyche to be confronted head-on; only then can Lina finally be who she really is, rather than who she’s been trying to be.
She’s Come Undone
It’s not easy to convey a character’s inner turmoil without having them describe their thoughts out loud. The Currents portrays Lina’s increasingly fragile mental state by highlighting those seemingly unimportant things you zero in on when you’re drowning inside your own head and looking for anything you can seize hold of to survive, such as small visual details and distinct sounds. These are what tether you to reality when you’re on the verge of dissociating; they’re what keep Lina from succumbing to the dark fantasies that occasionally take hold of her mind in inopportune moments. “I’m trying not to feel so ephemeral,” she says, and it’s hard to think of a more fitting way to sum up what she’s going through.
As befitting a film focused on a talented designer, The Currents is meticulously crafted. The visuals are stunning, the color palette shot through with streaks of bright red and blue. The musical score contributes to the haunting atmosphere with soaring woodwinds and strings, while the sound design focuses heavily on water and how hearing it triggers Lina’s trauma. González Sola excels at the almost impossible job of embodying such a complex character on screen, especially one who tries to keep so much buried inside; she’s also incredibly attractive and wears a lot of fantastic clothes, courtesy of costume designer Simona Martínez. Needless to say, she’s on screen in almost every moment of the film, but you never get tired of watching her.
source: Kino Lorber
Despite all this, The Currents feels somewhat less than the sum of its parts. It keeps a little too much close to the chest, allowing Lina’s feelings of alienation to infect the audience; while this was likely Mumenthaler’s intention, the result is less than satisfying, especially when the film has such an open ending. It’s also moderately difficult in the year 2026, when so many of us are struggling to function as the world melts down into a miasma of fascism, to feel a lot of sympathy for the trials and tribulations of such a beautiful bourgeois woman, even as you are fully aware that anyone on earth, no matter how privileged, is vulnerable to mental health issues.
Conclusion
There is a gorgeous sequence set in the lighthouse atop the Palacio Carolo in Buenos Aires in which it seems that Lina can see life—her own and others—illuminated for what feels like the first time; I wish there were more such magical moments in The Currents, as this one casts a spell so powerful that you can almost forget the film’s other flaws.
The Currents opens at Film at Lincoln Center in New York on May 29, 2026 and at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on June 5, 2026.
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