THE CURRENTS: A Mysterious and Unassuming Look at Mental Turmoil

There is a pivotal moment in The Currents where Lina (Isabel Aime Gonzalez Sola), a costume designer, talks to her friend and colleague Julia (Ernestina Gatti) about particular designs for their next show and in the middle of the conversation unannounced the sequence shifts to a surreal dream. Lina starts to hear crescendoing sounds of her daughter’s video game accompanied by the echoing clinking of Julia’s earrings. Suddenly Denise gets up, nonchalantly walks to the balcony and jumps off. It’s pivotal because it coalesces all of the unique and peculiar things that seem to haunt Lina. In a manner similar to Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter, though much more subtle and coy and creative about its exploration of traumatic events, Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Currents uses fantastical events and intrusive thoughts of its central character to disseminate the things that ails her. 

source: Kino Lorber

Breaking Reality

Lina in inexplicable impulsivity decided one day to hop off of a bridge into a river. The moment stays with her and her fear of water is immediately evident in her refusal to take baths, instead opting for undergoing unconsciousness while her sister administers a sponge bath. Water however is not the only haunting trope in the film. Mumenthaler represents moments of Lina’s break from reality with a distinct mix of sounds. It seems that the sense of rhythmic tremors or the sensation of sounds repeating and overlapping each other resemble the sort of sensation that water gives for Lina.

source: Kino Lorber

Mumenthaler’s purposefully elusive approach may be difficult for many viewers demanding more direct and intense representations of mental turmoil. Often times it does seem like the recurring senses of anxiety and fear within Lina come and go with little fanfare. But the film is powerful in the way it represents the sensations of water and sound. There is a deliberate sense of anticipation when Lina comes across loud or unique sounds that ring in her mind and are translated to the audience in a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds, which becomes disquieting. While a Hollywood film like Take Shelter may make mental illness and the feelings of paranoia and delusion explicit in the cuts to and from reality, this film is much more complex but can become less daunting if we can give into its its unannounced blend of fantasy and reality. 

Conclusion:

Often times films like this may seem intimidating because as viewers we are accustomed and conditioned to need cues and it becomes disruptive when a film doesn’t give those. Some films force us to contend with the uncertainty of what we are watching, whether it’s “real” or in the “present”. What something like The Currents does instead to make us really feel its character’s mental illness is use that uncertainty and discomfort to full effect.