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Lucía Puenzo Argentina
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Lucía
Puenzo, born in 1976, earned her degree in Literature at the University of
Buenos Aires and studied at the National Film Institute (INCAA). She is a
script writer for film and TV who has written feature films, documentary films
and mini-series. For XXY, she
was awarded at Cannes Film Festival
2007 the Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique, next to three other
prizes. Her second film, based on her novel El ninõ pez, opened the Panorama Section at
the Berlinale Filmfestival 2009.
In
2010, Lucía Puenzo was selected for the first-ever issue Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists of the prestigious English
literary magazine Granta. She will
film her latest novel Wakolda
in 2013.
El niño pez (“The Fish
Child”) tells of the relationship between two girls of very different
backgrounds. Lala is a teenager who lives in an upper-class neighbourhood of
Buenos Aires and discovers her love for Guayi, a seventeen-year-old maid
working in her house. They plan a future together near the Ypacaraí Lake, where
Guayi comes from. As Lala discovers that her father, the influential
intellectual Brontë, is sleeping with the girl, she hands him a glass of
poisoned milk. The day after his death Guayi disappears and Lala sets off to
the lake with her dog Serafín, the narrator of the novel.
From the metropolis the bus rumbles out into a Latin America - the story is conceivably a road movie – where archaic elements coexist with shrill modernity. Lala digs into Guayi’s past: her first love, a town boy who is now the most famous actor of Paraguayan television, her pregnancy, and the legend of a fish boy who guides the drowned to the bottom of the lake. Agile, sordid and fun too, Lucía Puenzo’s first novel surprises by an individual pace of prose and the intelligence of its writing.
Lucía
Puenzo weaves a densely packed tale about a plot filled with crazy
sensuousness, brutality, dejection and secrets. The Fish
Child is like a violent phantom chase. Incredibly sweet, infinitely cruel.
Le
Monde
The
beginnings and ends of the chapters are written with such care! Their vigour is
impressive.
Daniel
Scarfó
A strange mixture of fury, passion and sensibility.
La
Nación
There
is a promising future for her.
Screen
Her
narrative élan is absolutely rousing.
Der
Spiegel
9 Minutos captivates the reader by its rapid
tempo and scenically structured chapters. It’s all haywire in the life of the
five protagonists, who take turns in telling their part of the story, whilst
one of them, the recently sacked television presenter Iván, dares to take his
first skydive, a free fall of nine minutes. The marriage of Iván and Uma is
about to fail as Iván finds documents which convince him that Uma’s affair as a
student with the charismatic university professor Vinelli covertly smouldered
on for all these years. Their two voices are joined by those of the
twelve-year-old son Tiano, the gay family friend of the Buba’s and a young
female photographer.
In
both novels Lucía Puenzo knows to entertain and simultaneously introduce
alternative relationship and family models with great implicitness.
La maldición de
Jacinta Pichimahuida (“The Curse of Jacinta
Pichimahuida”) is based on
true events, which triggered a scandal in Buenos Aires in 2004. It is a harsh
criticism of the media, and in view of certain television programmes, for which
children and teenagers are recruited to boost viewing figures, only too
topical. And yet, Lucía Puenzo’s novel is also a beautiful love story: That of
Pepino and Twiggy, and of him and his father, whom he finally rescues from his
mother’s obsessions and takes into his care.
As Pepino and Twiggy meet on the coach from Buenos
Aires to Mar del Plata, both fall in love for the first time, discovering a
world they had not dared to hope for. Yet the past seems insurmountable, the
two of them fallen out and lonely existences at the age of thirty, victims of
their ambitious parents and messed up careers. One night Pepino thinks he recognises
Santa Cruz on the street, although it had been a while since he had been
ceremoniously buried. Naked and out of his mind, he runs onto the street,
desperately collecting the last scraps of a manuscript that he believes to be
the screenplay of his future.
When he abandons Twiggy for a whole night because
he runs into Jacinta by chance, her latest glimmer of hope evaporates. She
signs on as a porn actress, while Pepino is caught up in a swirl of deaths of
former soap actors.
La furia
de la langosta (“The
Lobster’s Fury”)) is told through the eyes of eleven-year-old Tino. His father Razzani, a
powerful manager of a large financial empire with political connections, is
suddenly persecuted by the media and the justice system. While Tino makes great efforts to understand what is going on
around him, he is condemned to witness his world collapsing.
Lucía Puenzo narrates with delicacy.
Tendencia
This shows Lucía Puenzo’s skill as a
narrator, to which we have to add her dexterity in creating strong atmospheres
and powerful images.
Clarín
A strange mixture of fury, passion and sensibility.
La
Nación
Her
narrative élan is absolutely rousing.
Der
Spiegel
Wakolda is
a highly intelligent drama about the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele's exile in
Patagonia. While continuing his research into racial purity ,
Mengele gains the trust of the midget Lilith. The girl soon starts to feel
flattered by his attention for herself and her doll Wakolda,
and does not discover his real intentions until the very end … This cleverly plotted
novel succeeds in unmasking Mengele through his actions and his cruel concept
of humankind.
In this astounding novel, Lucía Puenzo audaciously combines
historical events with her very own, fresh fiction. Her sharp eye for the least
visible layers of personality and the smallest details of everyday life creates
an atmosphere as gripping as it is ominous, captivating the reader.
Leer
es un placer
Original editions and rights sold:
Novels:
El niño pez, Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo 2004, 169 p.
Film directed by Lucía
Puenzo, produced by Luis Puenzo
and Wanda Visión. Presented at the Berlinale 2009
Brazil: Gryphus 2009 ● France: Stock 2010 ● Germany: Wagenbach 2009 ● Italy: La Nuova Frontiera 2009
● Romania: Univers 2011 ● Spain: Caballo
de Troya 2009 ● Turkey: Dogan ● US: Texas Tech University
Press 2010
9 Minutos, Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo
2005, 184 p.
La maldición de Jacinta Pichimahuida, Buenos
Aires: Interzona 2007, 301 p.
France:
Stock 2011 ● Germany: Wagenbach 2010
La furia de la langosta
Buenos
Aires: Mondadori 2010, 229 p.
France:
Stock ● Spain: Duomo 2011
Wakolda
Buenos Aires: Emecé/Planeta 2011, 203 p.
Film
rights sold, co-production by Historias Cinematográficas, Pyramide, Wanda
Visión and Dreamers Joint Venture, forthcoming in 2013
English translation available
France:
Stock ● Germany: Wagenbach
● Italy:
Guanda
● Spain:
Duomo
Participation in anthologies:
Granta Magazine: The Best of Young
Spanish Language Novelists
UK: Granta 2010
(Short Story Cohiba)
Asado Verbal
Germany: Wagenbach 2010
(Excerpt of La furia de
la langosta)
Screen-plays:
Historias cotidianas, 2000, directed by Andrés Habegger
La puta
y la ballena, 2003, directed by Luis Puenzo
A través
de tus ojos, 2006, directed by Rodrigo Fürth
XXY, 2007, directed by Lucía Puenzo
El niño
pez, 2009, directed by Lucía
Puenzo
Wakolda, to be filmed in 2013, directed by Lucía Puenzo