Following Open Doors and Windows (2011) and The Idea of a Lake (2016), Milagros Mumenthal ventures into more ambitious territory with The Currents. This psychological thriller, despite touring all the basic film festivals (Toronto, San Sebastian, New York Film Festival), knows how its protagonist is different from the others, knows how to think, feel, and breathe as a character, creating a resonance in the world created there. At the same time, it makes us question the everyday life that we take for granted, and this may drag us down. In the vein of its main character, Mumenthal depicts Lina, a woman who faces profound and mysterious changes after returning from Geneva. With its distant, Hitchcockian style, its radical yet camera-like visual personality, and its protagonist’s near-absolute perspective, the film travels the threshold between the concrete and the dreamlike, the intimate and the social, showing how bodily memory and emotional drift can transform the life of a woman on the brink of collapse. Mumenthala always speaks of the image of a fully clothed woman falling into the water on a bridge, a fact from which she creates elegant and monstrous stories of the conflict between body and society, but far from gesture, Mumenthala knows how to build, take root, and erode ordinary places to produce films that reflect the memory of the body. The Locarno Prize-winning director said, “Actually, it’s a bit of a concept that the body has memory. It’s almost a theoretical thing, and it’s not so much that you think about it as a theory when you move it into a certain dimension, but rather that the character has a dissociation of body and mind, and the body does things that it can’t express sometimes. It’s obvious from a symbolic point of view, but I thought a lot about this movie from her point of view. There are some things that we seem to remember. Even in the moment, she always stays focused on what she thinks the character is and never jumps to other points of view. There is a lot of information written about Lina, including her childhood, her relationship with her mother and father, how she influenced her, and how she met Pedro. All this helps you to put yourself in her shoes and think about her needs. In The Currents, Milagros Mumenthaler explores how success can become uncertain territory when identity begins to erode. The film not only narrates a crisis, but also looks at how bonds, everyday gestures, and relationships with one’s own body become symptoms of intimate imbalance. Mumenthal turns the minimal into a revelation. It’s a film that moves between memory and recognition, and moments when everything seems to have lost its meaning.
–The movie respects that sense of drifting, in that the character is in control and you don’t know where it’s going, but how did you frame it when thinking about it for the screen?
–That’s something that comes from writing. Characters are not fully connected to their surrounding environment, except at very specific moments, such as at the end or in the workshop. Drifts are small deviations that, when written, create visual and sonic images. I wanted a suspended space from the moment I entered the city of Geneva. Temporary environments, classic staging with fixed shots, travel, panning, etc. Lina’s gaze has specificity, but to others it may seem like time has stopped. It always radiates weirdness. There’s something about showing the world what it needs without stopping yourself or leaving civilization.
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–And water is always present, so why did you choose that element, the shape of the flow, and the way it drags?
–It’s the germ of history. During my trip to Geneva, I imagined a woman jumping into freezing water in the middle of winter. Water works in different ways. The body behaves differently and has an attractive and beautiful surface, but underneath there is an underground unknown world that creates fear. Additionally, I was interested in the idea of flow. The flow drags back and forth, like a current that mirrors the film itself.
–There is something monstrous, something outside of a certain normality, a certain construction of everyday life, but it also does not turn its back on desire and sexuality. How did those elements coexist?
–That’s also part of the character. This couple has very noticeable physical and sexual strength. It is a refuge for her and a way to protect herself. The monstrous always exists. Everyone has a monstrous side, and it shows up from time to time or depending on the circumstances of life.
She maintains her sexuality so as not to collapse under the gaze of others and the dictates of society.
――Have you ever been surprised by something that appeared naturally while filming?
—Yes, I learned a lot from editing and directing. The film grew longer and had more psychologically closed moments, but ultimately found an unpredictable rhythm that gave the film a life of its own. Although the genre is not a psychological thriller, certain codes were present. This was adjusted during editing, resulting in a smoother film with its own rhythm.
—Photos and sounds create a unique atmosphere. How did you approach it?
— The choice of location often determines the light and tones, which are later adjusted during the shoot. For example, her mother’s apartment is a masculine house with cold lighting and poorly arranged spaces. The film uses certain Hitchcock codes and a more classic, timeless film that was ultimately shot digitally but was designed for 35mm, suspended for an indeterminate number of decades, to express the nostalgia of what was lost. The light, the colors, the planning of the shots, everything is always thought out economically and precisely based on what the characters should look and feel.
—You talked about Hitchcock and classic stories, what were you interested in bringing from that world?
— I was interested in fluid storytelling, shot economy, how shot value is constructed, and how characters are perceived physically. It is a cinema where everything depends on Lina’s vision, where classic stories are adapted to the modern world, allowing time to stop without losing the internal coherence of the story.
—Finally, what moved you now that this movie has been released and seen by the general public?
— I’m touched that people understand that and relate to the film despite its specificity. Publishing always comes with a certain level of frustration. Although the movie was not a huge hit, we managed to sell it to several countries, which creates a sense of accomplishment. Looking at the distribution situation, there are some dark feelings, but it’s still the movie we wanted to make. It’s so fun to see how the characters and their worlds resonate beyond the confines of a shoot or creative workshop.
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