Zama, an officer of the Spanish Crown born in South America, waits for a letter from the King granting him a transfer from the backwater in which he is stagnating to a better location. He is forced to accept submissively every task entrusted to him by successive Governors who come and go as he stays. Of course, the letter from the King never arrives, and when Zama notices that he has lost everything waiting, he decides to join a party of soldiers that go after a dangerous bandit. Based on Antonio Di Benedetto’s classic novel published in 1956, Zama clearly demonstrates Argentinean master Lucrecia Martel’s artistic views on the network of human existence, history and the landscapes. Following the protagonist’s states of mind, the film takes an elliptical narrative in series of rather picturesque portrayals of him and the surroundings. Face of Daniel Giménez Cacho, a star of Mexican cinema, becomes a landscape of the wounded subject in colonial Latin America.
[BIFF]