So this is by Lucrecia Martel, who you might remember from La Ciénaga. Like that movie, this one is savage about class divisions in Argentina, but here she’s heightening things by making a period piece set in Spanish colonial times.

The titular protagonist is an American-born Spaniard (so I guess criollo in the elaborate racial caste system of the era), and he’s the magistrate of a shithole remote outpost of the empire; all he wants is to transfer to Buenos Aires, a more prestigious posting and one that’s not so far from civilization (and his family, which is not with him in this place). The transfer keeps being dangled in front of him, but never actually granted, and his desperation grows more pathetic as the movie goes on.

And really, that’s the core of the movie, his desperation and fear and how it combines with the power that he wields as an imperial functionary. There’s an early scene where he comes across a group of native women bathing, and is spying on them. One of them sees him and cries “Voyeur!” at which point he starts to run away; trying to find out who was spying on them, one woman chases after as he pathetically tries to escape detection. But then once she catches him, he immediately turns on her and backhands her viciously. Because of course he’s in a position with the power to turn his humiliation into violence.

At least for that moment he is, because the movie is really about the dissolution of his life, as he loses basically everything, and finally goes on an expedition to find a semi-mythical bandit figure, which turns increasingly surreal and tragic — it reminded me a lot of Aguirre by the end.

It’s a scathing critique of colonialism and the racial hierarchies that it brought with it, while also being a portrait of a psyche in dissolution, and a gorgeous piece of film-making. But also, I’ll be honest, it’s pretty slow and more than a little confusing, so while I admire this one, I wouldn’t exactly rush out to recommend it.