[Film Review] Leni (2020)

The deeper we bury our grief, loneliness, and anxiety, the more powerful our monsters become. This is the idea that is explored in Leni, the indie festival darling out of Argentina, written and directed by Federico Gianotti. 

Leni is a woman beset by suffering. We meet her in an empty apartment, wailing in angst on the floor, faint traces of blood on her hands, broken glass scattered all around her. From her scream, the scene abruptly cuts to the darkness of woods at night, with Leni being dragged by an unseen figure to a muddy grave. When she awakens in her bed, she experiences the first of many hallucinations before violently vomiting mouthfuls of dirt. It is made clear early on that Leni, and the audience, shouldn’t trust what she believes she is experiencing. Rest is made impossible by terrifying images that present more as hypnagogic hallucinations than deep sleep nightmares.

Her doctor alludes to stress as the cause of her problems. Her mother has recently passed and she and her boyfriend, Martin, have also split up. The doctor suggests finding a way to relax, take her mind off her troubles, but Leni only wants a short-term solution. The sleeping pills she is prescribed barely help, and she is confronted with more waking nightmares as well as what she assumes to be the persistent harassment of her ex. 

Leni is filled with abrupt and jarring transitions as well as piercing diegetic sound over the hypnotic, droning score. These details make sure the audience maintains the same sense of unease and confusion as Leni, as she discovers invasive muddy footprints in her house, a hidden trunk that carries the memories of horrible family secrets, and the overwhelming sense that Leni is never truly safe, and never truly alone. 

Ultimately, this is a film that examines the effects of the past on our present, the heartbreak of unearthing long hidden truths, and the damage that is done to the body and mind no matter how hard one tries to move on. It is painful to watch, because it is so familiar. Leni has a beating, broken heart, one that Ailín Zaninovich portrays with bold and unwavering abandon. She moves through her world with the strength of a survivor, but her eyes betray her exhaustion. And honestly, those exhausted eyes are that of many, many women. 

At one point in the film, Leni breaks down and visits a therapist. There she admits that she knows her nightmares aren’t real, but she is scared of them anyways. She says she doesn’t want to get used to them. She doesn’t want to get used to changing the locks, or taking self-defense classes, or being alert, just in case someone shows up. She says, “I don’t want to die in fear.” 

Most women, exhausted from these very thoughts that are forced into our brains every day, will take a deep breath as she says these words. This confession is one of the most powerful moments in the film. It is an expression of vulnerability that no woman wants to utter out loud, but that every woman at one point will internalize. Leni’s suffering is a long line tethered to her past, it is an invisible mark that, in her eyes, leaves her open to abuse at the hands of the men in her life as she confesses to her sister that she sees her relationship with Martin as mirroring her mother and father’s. She reacts to the things that are happening to her with, at some moments, a numb detachment and, at other points, overwhelming embodiment. 

While so much of Leni focuses on her journey of traversing the terrors that may or may not be only in her mind, it certainly doesn’t relish in her angst. The viewer slowly begins to see things that Leni doesn’t, and comes to realize that Leni might have more power over the events taking place than she even understands. 

Leni holds a stunning performance by its lead and a haunting sadness that permeates throughout. It captures the dread of making a wrong decision, the futility of forgiveness, and depths to which our minds can go when facing the looming darkness of truth.

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