Jauja

Echoes of Lisandro Alonso's second feature, Los Muertos (2004), reverberate around the Argentinian auteur's first period picture (and first collaboration with a name star). But it's also possible to detect the influence of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972) in a quest saga whose metaphysical digressions and dream interludes will fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. Typically, Alonso makes some discomfiting points about colonialism, progress, duty and sexuality as he follows Danish engineer Viggo Mortensen's bid to find 15-year-old daughter Viilbjork Malling Agger, who has eloped with a disaffected member of an army unit detailed to drive the indigenous population out of 1880s Patagonia. Alonso and poet Fabian Casas initially linger on the onerous nature of this desert mission after Mortensen has been forced into the wilderness, teasingly slipping in an encounter with a renegade soldier and glimpses of the future into an increasingly hallucinated journey. It's all made immersively compelling by cinematographer Timo Salminen who uses long shots, close-ups and heightened colour within the boxy 4:3 aspect ratio (complete with rounded frame edges) to depict this mythical land of plenty.