La marea

A young woman wakes up in a stationary wrecked car. Her left shoulder is covered in blood. Her husband is sitting beside her. Then someone shouts. A woman has found a child in the back of the car. An ambulance is called. When her little boy is operated on in the hospital, a team of doctors come outside afterwards and not her child. The woman faints. Her little boy has died. We don’t find out any more about Azul and her family.
La marea shows the mourning of an anonymous woman who has lost everything and leaves it all behind. She withdraws into a small hut on a deserted beach, hours walking from the first source of water and accommodation. Her self-imposed isolation is only broken by a couple of fleeting encounters. She only allows a wounded dog to keep her company. When she collapses, a fisherman saves her.
Virtually without words Diego Martinez Vignatti paints the vacuum within which a person finds oneself after a great shock. Time loses its usual frame of reference. The most everyday needs turn into alienating activities, but form involuntary steps in an unknown future. Filmed on the deserted beaches of Argentina, Azul’s story moves reluctantly with the tides, until her last hope is stranded. (SdH)