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Undoubtedly different from the rest of Lucrecia Martel's highly idiosyncratic filmography, Zama is nevertheless every inch a Martel film. Not only is it the work of a master, with each and every cut and framing so perfect as to feel somehow holy writ. It is, much like La Cienaga and The Holy Girl, a droning symphony of waiting, a study in suspension. And, like The Headless Woman, Zama is centered on a protagonist whose sense of entitlement is so great that not only is it his undoing. It becomes virtually indistinguishable from mental illness.
Based on the novel by Antonio Di Benedetto, a book that is widely regarded as the key text of Argentinean modernism, Zama places the existential…