Trenque Lauquen (film)

Trenque Lauquen is a 2022 Argentine-German mystery-drama film directed by Laura Citarella, and starring Laura Paredes, who co-wrote the screenplay with Citarella. A sequel to Citarella's Ostende (2011), the film premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival. It was theatrically released in two parts.

Plot
A woman disappears and two men go out on the road to look for her: they both love her. While looking for her, they wonder why did she leave, and although each man has their own suspicions about the real reason, they keep their thoughts hidden from each other, all the while never really becoming rivals. The sudden escape becomes the hidden core of a series of vignettes that the film delicately weaves: the secret of another woman's heart, also lost, many years ago; the secret of the life of a town in the countryside, governed by a supernatural incident that no one seems to perceive; the secret of their region's plains, which never cease to spread and devour everything, like the mysterious shadows that invade the world after the hour of twilight.

Cast

 * Laura Paredes as Laura
 * Ezequiel Pierri as Ezequiel aka 'Chicho'
 * Rafael Spregelburd as Rafa
 * Elisa Carricajo as Elisa Esperanza
 * Verónica Llinás as Romina
 * Juliana Muras as Juliana
 * Cecilia Rainero as Normita

Release
The film had its world premiere in the Orizzonti section of the 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival. It was later screened at various festivals including San Sebastián International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. In the US, it was released in two parts on 21 April 2023.

Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 95% based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 91 out of 100, based on 7 critics' reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Trenque Lauquen was ranked first on Cahiers du Cinéma's top 10 films of 2023 list.