Not since Sunset Boulevard has there been an estate as oddly populated and a swimming pool as tepid and nonfunctional as in the semi-Buñuelian La ciénaga ("The Swamp"), a deserving Berlin Film Festival prize winner from first-time Argentine director Lucrecia Martel. Fiftyish mother-of-four Mecha (Graciela Borges), summering in a dank, sweaty country estate in northwest Argentina, gets drunk and ditsy beside her filthy pool. She’s unhappy because her passive, ex-philandering husband, Gregorio (Martín Adjemian), takes no notice of her. Even the maid, Isabel (Andrea López), ignores the fact that Mecha, complaining of untrustworthy Indian help, has fired her for stealing towels. Instead, Isabel lies around in a bed next to Mecha’s teenage daughter, Momi (Sofia Bertolotto), who has a crush on her.

Nothing happens sexually, and neither does much happen, period, though the movie is filled with half-naked bodies lying sweltering on top of one another in various boudoirs: unrealized lesbianism, unrequited incest. As the title implies, life is a swamp, with purposeless people wallowing in it. Is there an out? Peasants in the neighboring town sight the Virgin Mary, so maybe she’s in Argentina. Probably not. And Mecha, who’s desperate for salvation, keeps planning with her cousin a shopping trip to Bolivia. Sigh! One can’t help but remember Chekhov’s unhappy three sisters pining to get to Moscow.