Review: ‘The Currents’ captures the tumultuous waters of depression

Milagros Mumethaler read Siri Hustvedt’s The Shaking Woman, in which Hustvedt describes an experience of her body and mind enduring very different circumstances, and the story became the impetus for her new film. The Currents sinks below the depths of the subconscious and fishes out dark existential questions about what it means to live, to die, and to wander through existence in a fog. A feeling of earnest desperation blankets the film, as it oscillates between a dreamy bit of surrealism and the real-life horror of depression.

We first meet Lina (Isabel Aimé González-Sola) during an event, at which she accepts an award for her work in fashion. When she excuses herself to the restroom, the bubbly facade fades, and she becomes listless, even tossing her crystal accolade in the trash. Later, something seizes her body, and she jumps from a nearby bridge into an ice-laced river. She survives, but she’s different. She becomes overwhelmed with a suffocating fear of water and severe melancholia, so when she returns home to Buenos Aires, she meanders through her everyday life. Her attempts to readapt to life are fraught with loneliness, despair, and incredible existentialism. Lina pulls away from her husband and finds herself growing increasingly isolated. She goes through long periods of being unable to shower or wash her hair—frequent trademarks of those suffering from depression.

González-Sola approaches the character with remarkable tenderness and compassion, delving into the many layers lining her character’s fragile mind. There’s a sense of beauty mixed into her performance, delicately wrapped around the tragedy like a rose bush climbing a trellis. Mumethaler, along with cinematographer Gabriel Sandru, decorates the film with a desolate, yet whimsical, color palette and tight shots that pulse onscreen. Stylistic choices often mirror Lina’s distress over not being heard and the tenuous relationship she has with life itself. Her quest for answers seems a futile effort, and therein lies the struggle of humanity to always know everything. But sometimes, there just aren’t answers for any of it.

Milagros Mumethaler ponders matters of the universe through Lina’s troubled eyes. She weaves existential dread through the psychological collapse of one woman, representative of all of us, really. There’s something to be said about the mysteries of the world that cling to our sticky brains and result in sleepless nights of overthinking and the mental sores that sprout from a place of real misery. The Currents makes its way through the David Lynch school of filmmaking, with a razor-sharp understanding of the intricacies of human nature and how we both adapt to shifting realities.

The audience also confronts their own place within Mumethaler’s hypnotic world. The drama/thriller appears ghost-like upon first watch, leaving one’s imagination clouded with a bizarre high. The Currents doesn’t just wash you in the silence of a mental break; it detonates everything you know about what it means to be human.

The Currents is currently playing in theaters and will hit VOD on July 14.