Unsettling Assemblages: Anxiety and Materiality in La Ciénaga (Martel, 2001) and Distancia de rescate (Llosa, 2021)

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between anxiety and the nonhuman in the films La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001) and Distancia de rescate (Claudia Llosa, 2021). The recognition of the material continuity between the characters and their environment is central to the production of negative affect in both diegesis. Anxiety is condensed in specific signifiers that produce a palpable tension between absence and excess, and in the configuration of milieus where overproximity among agents is unavoidable. In addition, the liminality of interiority and exteriority, the hybridization of the self and the vulnerability of the body to toxic substances contribute to this oppressive affective landscape. Anxiety, as a signal of danger, points towards foundational fears around the blurring of ontological boundaries between the human and the nonhuman. The impossibility of isolation emerges in these films as an anxious trace in the form of cinematographic images, through characters that try to navigate a world in which dualism and human exceptionalism are being questioned.