Trama

A Colombian refugee tries to rebuild her life at a guest house located on the shores of a great lake in the Andes.

Having nowhere else to turn, a teenager named Alicia, following the deaths of her parents by unknown guerrillas in a war-torn region of Columbia, is able to track down her paternal Uncle Óscar for a place to live if only temporarily, he who didn't even know she existed and who had not seen Alicia's parents for quite some time. He agrees, with one stipulation being that she stay out of his son Freddy's room, Freddy who no longer lives there. Óscar lives at La Sirga, a run down guest house nestled in the mountains and on the shores of Laguna De La Cocha. It is barely inhabitable and which impoverished Óscar does not have the money to repair. Despite the probability that any tourists stopping by anytime soon is remote at best due in part to the war, Alicia, to do her part, starts to help make repairs along with Óscar's housekeeper Flora, while Óscar largely spends his time down at the harbor trying to set-up a trout farm with his friends at the cooperative. Alicia also befriends Mirichis, the young man who works transporting goods up and down the lake. Life at La Sirga takes a turn with the mysterious return of Freddy, who may or may not know of some ominous goings-on which threaten their existence.—Huggo

Alicia is helpless. Traumatizing war memories invade her mind like a ceaseless storm. Uprooted from her destroyed village by the armed conflict, Alicia tries to start a new life in La Sirga, a dilapidated hostel on the shores of a great lake in the highlands of the Andes. The place belongs to Oscar, her only surviving relative. There, on a swampy and murky beach, she will try to settle down until her fears and the threat of war resurface again. "La Sirga" translates to "Towpath" in English.

Fleeing from an vaguely explained war that has destroyed her village and decimated her family, 19-year-old Alicia (Joghis Seudyn Arias) arrives at the ramshackle lakeside guest house run by her middle-aged uncle Oscar (Julio Cesar Robles). He reluctantly offers her shelter, recruiting her to help with renovating the houses rickety wooden framework in preparation for tourists that never come. The sleepwalking Alicia soon becomes a focus of sexual interest among the local menfolk. Both Oscar and his adult son Freddy (Heraldo Romero), who returns home with mysterious injuries and murky intentions following a long absence, spy on her at night.

A co-production between Colombia, Mexico and France, La Sirga is an elliptical portrait of life on the fringes of a low-level war. Director William Vega never contextualizes the violence that hovers just out of shot, besides glancingly opaque allusions to Colombias long-running, drug-fuelled guerrilla conflict. However, this purgatorial setting could just as easy be a timeless post-apocalyptic wasteland straight out of a Tarkovksy or Beckett. Indeed, Tarkovksy is a clear influence on Vegas spare shooting style, framing these waterlogged landscapes and crumbling wooden shacks with a chilly film-school formalism that is impeccably elegant but also stiff and outdated.

Punctuated by a constant rhythmic backbeat of creaking wood, rustling wind and hammering rainfall, La Sirga is essentially a disjointed collage of stark sound effects and strikingly composed images. There may be an engaging human story buried in here somewhere, but the film-makers prefer to keep it maddeningly cryptic. Vegas mastery of old-school arthouse technique is impressive. But much like Alicia, any viewers hoping to be informed or entertained may end up sleepwalking to the concession stand.