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      ‘Oppenheimer,’ ‘Asteroid City’ and the Meaning of the Mushroom Cloud

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      From the Trinity test to “Oppenheimer” and “Asteroid City,” the symbol of nuclear destruction has held multiple but equally disturbing meanings.Witnesses to the Trinity test, the inaugural atomic bomb experiment in 1945 portrayed in “Oppenheimer,” described the billowing blast in various ways. It was said to resemble a chimney, a parasol, a raspberry and — shades of science fiction — a “convoluting brain.” The physicist Enrico Fermi and others likened the furiously rising cloud in the New Mexico desert to a mushroom, and that became the shape now inextricably associated with nuclear explosions.The enduring shorthand of the mushroom cloud has taken on different meanings over the decades, reflecting fantasies and fears as it boomed and bloomed across American culture, including, most recently, onscreen in “Oppenheimer” and “Asteroid City.” A multiplicity of meanings is appropriate for a weapon that was partly conceived as a symbolic demonstration in the first place, meant to cow Japan into surrender in World War II.Once the cloud appeared, it quickly stood in for that watershed moment in history. By the beginning of nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll in 1946 — meant to measure the effects of such blasts on warships — one reporter referred to the mushroom as “the common symbol of the atomic age.” At a reception to celebrate the first round of tests, the commander of the operation, Vice Admiral William H.P. Blandy, even cut a cake shaped like a mushroom blast.From Armageddon to dessert decoration in a little over a year: The rapid progression captures the wonder-horror duality that the bomb elicited. On the one hand, the looming form fed easily into a military and jingoistic pride. What other instrument of war essentially left a trademark in the sky? On the other, it provoked sheer terror with its vision of godlike destruction funneled straight up to the heavens. The co-pilot of the Enola Gay bomber put it more succinctly: “My God, what have we done?,” words that Oppenheimer echoed with his momentous quotation from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”David Lynch depicted the Trinity test in a hallucinogenic scene in “Twin Peaks: The Return.”ShowtimeAnd yet something so novel and dazzling couldn’t help but make its way into popular culture. If the Bikini test could inspire the name of a swimsuit, then of course the mushroom cloud would be picked up as a titillating marketing gimmick. A few beauty queens were deployed as “Miss Atomic Bomb” and the like, wearing mushroom-shaped headgear or swimwear, part of a general fad for atomic-themed kitsch (as memorably chronicled in the documentary “The Atomic Cafe”). The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce offered calendars with detonation times for watching the mushroom clouds from desert tests. In Wes Anderson’s desert-set “Asteroid City,” characters also observe an atomic test on the horizon, trooping out of a diner to watch with nonchalance.But a golden era of sci-fi movies in the 1950s ensured that the deadly possibilities of the atomic age were also explored in vivid visual fashion. These mushroom clouds directly addressed new sources of anxiety: the arms race (set off after the Soviets’ 1949 atomic test), the effects of radiation, and the hydrogen bomb and its even bigger boom. Monster and alien movies (and sci-fi book covers) featured the cloud as a modern Pandora’s box, a foolish unleashing of unknown forces.From early on, it could signify the unthinkable — the erasure of civilization — as in Arch Oboler’s movie “Five” (1951), which opens with explosions and a montage of historical monuments. The cloud could represent the beginning or the end (to echo the title of a 1947 docudrama about Oppenheimer). It might be the prelude to a plot about surviving the aftermath of a nuclear blast, or the doomsday finale to a story that has gone very, very wrong. Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” from 1964, falls into the second category, concluding with a montage using footage from explosions (including the Trinity test).But Kubrick alters our understanding of the mushroom clouds with the ironic usage of Vera Lynn singing “We’ll Meet Again,” originally a British World War II standard. Viewed silently, the explosions might have induced the usual dread, an emotion that in a way also fed back into awe and fear of military prowess. Kubrick’s peerless satire redirects our focus toward those in power, the absurd-sounding game-theory strategies at work, and the self-serving vanities involved — including the image of Slim Pickens riding the bomb, bronco-style, American soldier as cowboy.All of which undercut the mushroom cloud as totemic image that ends all discussion. It wouldn’t last long: President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 campaign ad “Daisy” distilled the nuclear menace in just under two minutes. This is the cloud as the eternal “or else” of the protecting patriarch. The stakes are too high to ignore, Johnson intones in voice-over, as a girl counts the petals on a flower; the audio segues into a countdown toward an explosion that fills the screen. So, you know, get out and vote!The horrors of the mushroom cloud approached new levels in the 1980s thanks to realistic depictions of global nuclear war. As tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union reached a fevered pitch during the Reagan administration (as if fulfilling the fears of “no nukes” protesters), “The Day After” (1983) broke television ratings records portraying explosions from incoming missiles and the ensuing graphic suffering in Kansas. In Britain, “Threads” (1984) did much the same, while in Japan, Shohei Imamura’s 1989 “Black Rain” dramatized the Hiroshima bombings anew. These films reconnected the near-cliché of the mushroom cloud with its human context of death, destruction and chaos.But in the ensuing decades, the mushroom cloud became the ultimate special effect for blockbusters. James Cameron’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991) faithfully replicated the fiery annihilation of a bomb blast, hauntingly explicit but still part of a science-fiction thriller with robots. Three years later, a nuclear explosion was just the icing on the action-adventure cake in Cameron’s “True Lies.” Call it the decadent era of nukes onscreen: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis embrace after the umpteenth thrilling escape, with a warhead’s mushroom cloud for a romantic backdrop.Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis in “True Lies,” which uses a mushroom cloud as a romantic backdrop.Lightstorm EntertainmentThe entertainment value of disaster briefly lost its appeal in the wake of Sept. 11 (when a number of films were postponed or altered). But atomic devices were useful plot devices with increasing prominence in 2010s blockbusters, deploying the shock of the mushroom cloud whenever useful, as in the jaw-dropping World War II-set opening of “The Wolverine” (2013). When Nagasaki is bombed by the United States, Logan (Hugh Jackman), prisoner of war, shields a Japanese soldier from the blast, thereby rendering the cataclysm as simply part of the X-Men back story.Will the mushroom cloud reacquire the same foreboding quality it had at the height of the Cold War? David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: The Return” (2017) demonstrated one possibility in its genuinely destabilizing Episode 8, drawing out the full uncanny horror of the atomic age and the possibility of evil. The Trinity test is depicted with a hallucinogenic slow camera movement into the cloud from far away, and in one of the ensuing surreal sequences, a mutant creature hatches on the bomb site years later. Oppenheimer said that his scientists had “known sin,” and Lynch, a voyager into the American unconscious, restores some sense of the atomic blast as locus of a 20th-century original sin.“Oppenheimer,” directed by Christopher Nolan, presents the latest entry in the iconography of the mushroom cloud with its chronicle of the Manhattan Project’s explosive results. We do see the traditional rising plume, but at a certain point, this turns into an IMAX-size wall of flame, blotting out the landscape. It’s a fearsome sight, yet the reaction shots of the observers are just as important. Cillian Murphy’s title character — who is more or less haunted by subatomic particles even in his dreams as a student years earlier — looks briefly disarmed or stricken by the infernal sight of the blast. We hear the famous words from the Bhagavad Gita, but in Nolan’s telling, they’ve been previously uttered in a wildly different context that suggests the atomic bomb as the ultimate psychosexual release.It’s a depiction that manages to fulfill and tweak expectations at the same time. Nolan returns the nuclear explosion from the realm of symbolism to a primal zone of fears and urges — a cataclysm created by other human beings like us. More

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      Zach Galifianakis Lives in the Cringe

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      The comedian and star of “The Beanie Bubble” feels proud to be an American when he watches “The Simpsons.” These are some of his other favorite things.Zach Galifianakis grew up on Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Redd Foxx and David Letterman, but he never sat in front of the family television thinking he wanted to be them. He was more interested in keeping up with his family.He liked the way his older cousins imitated people. His parents were hilarious. They all performed skits at reunions. He once dressed his sister up as the Ayatollah Khomeini. He got good at doing the robot.“The way we communicate is through humor,” the comedian and actor said in a phone interview in July, before Hollywood actors went on strike, adding: “It’s as basic as: I enjoyed the sound of people laughing.”In his latest film, “The Beanie Bubble,” he portrays the billionaire behind Beanie Babies, the stuffed animals that were a cultural craze in the 1990s. There are moments when viewers might not know whether to laugh or cringe.“You don’t see it much in movies because movies want to sometimes show a different side of humanity,” Galifianakis said. “I live in the awkward and cringe because I find life can be like that.”Galifianakis, a 53-year-old resident of the “Canadian woods,” discussed writing jokes on his tractor, avoiding Twitter, and the radio he listens to on the road. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1NatureI grew up rural, and all I wanted to do was run to the city. Now that I’m older, all I want to do is run back to the woods. I always tell people: Don’t forget about the woods, because as city dwellers, as urbanites, as suburbanites, we forget. There’s a lot of poetry in the woods.2Nature DocumentariesI often go back to “Alone in the Wilderness,” this documentary about Dick Proenneke, a man who lived in a remote cabin in Alaska that he built himself. I’m envious of his skill, of being able to live off the earth. There’s something beautiful about that kind of life. I’m a complete hypocrite. I’ll never get there. But had I reworked a couple things, I would’ve probably aimed a little bit more for that kind of life.3Local RadioI don’t know how to work apps. So, when I’m in the car, I listen to the radio. In Canada, CBC always has something good on. When I’m working in Atlanta, radio there has a lot of good, old hip-hop. And when I’m in California, I listen to KCRW, which still plays new music.4Gardening-Adjacent HobbiesWhen I first moved to Los Angeles, I planted peanuts, and I’ve been gardening ever since. My hobbies are usually garden-related, like making my own fertilizer. My kids will go get deer bones out of the woods, and then I’ll grind them up and make my own bone meal.5Grilling for DummiesI cook pizza on my Big Green Egg, which I bought during the pandemic. I’d always been intimidated by grilling. But any moron can cook on that thing and you’ll think you’re eating at an amazing restaurant.6Thinking While on My TractorI’ve had a tractor for a number of years. It’s where I do most of my thinking about standup — specifically joke-writing. It lets me sit there and numb out and think about jokes I’ve done and try to add to them.7Visiting Greece and Taking It EasyThis is the thing about Greece, where my dad’s family is from, and Europe in general: It’s about walking to go get a coffee. It’s about sitting down and having a conversation. I feel like these older societies have their priorities a little bit more in check sometimes. They’ve been through it. They’ve seen it. So there’s a coolness to me about Greece. And I just agree with the lifestyle. Also, the history there is unbelievable.8‘The Simpsons’ (Made in the U.S.A.)I’m always pleasantly surprised at how much that show can still make me gut laugh. There’s not many shows like that. Shows like “The Simpsons,” and the fact that Prince was from America, that just makes me proud to be an American.9A Book Worth Paying Attention ToWhen I read a book, I want everyone to know I read books, so I talk about it to everyone. “Stolen Focus,” by Johann Hari, is basically a deep, deep dive into the phone and social media. When you finish this book, you’ll go: We’ve all been duped, especially young kids who feel social media and constant contact is a must. I highly, highly recommend it, especially for parents.10IRL ObservationsThe biggest crime of social media is that it’s so boring. I’ll hear people say: You should see what I just tweeted out. As soon as I hear “Twitter,” my face glazes over. For somebody like me, I have to observe. I need to see the small spaces in life as an actor, as someone that tries to make people laugh. I’m not going to get that from Twitter. But, look: I’m 53. I’m old. I’m out of the loop. Nobody should listen to me. More

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      The Best True Crime to Stream Now

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      Four picks across television, documentary and podcast that do a lot more than rehash what we already know about notorious killers.Decades before true crime crept in from the margins and inundated pop culture, I found a humble paperback buried in the stacks of my parents’ bookshelf about America’s most notorious serial killers. Perhaps inadvisable for a 10 year old, I read and reread about the horrors inflicted by, among others, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy. Though I was already aware that terrible things happened in general, this was different: specific, personal and intimately chilling.Lately, and fortunately, the tired approach of centering these monsters by rehashing their personal struggles and the details of their deeds has been falling out of favor. Interest has shifted instead to elevating the stories of those impacted and to understanding the mood of the eras and the societal circumstances in which these crimes took place. This shift was reflected to some degree in July when a man was arrested in the Gilgo Beach serial killings. Profiles of the suspect abounded, but from the start, there was demand for information about the victims as well as scrutiny of the investigation.This is the first in a series of streaming lists about true crime films, shows and podcasts. And while I won’t dwell on these types of murderers in this in the future, the topic does feel like the appropriate place to start. Here are picks across television, documentary and podcast that offer more than the usual glorification of madness.Documentary Mini-Series“Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York”No series in recent memory has so successfully, thoughtfully and deliberately contextualized a serial killing spree like this four-part Max series, based on a book by Elon Green. In the early 1990s, amid the AIDS crisis and rising hate crimes against L.G.B.T.Q. people, gay men were being stalked in Manhattan piano bars — murdered and dismembered, their bodies found discarded around New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. But the killer’s identity, almost remarkably, is not front of mind as the episodes proceed.Instead, through interviews with family members, friends, lovers, and members and allies of the queer community, the victims are powerfully, heartbreakingly humanized, while viewers are plunged into the New York City of the time. Instead of simply alluding to the problems of bias and bigotry by those entrusted to solve these crimes, this series boldly addresses the ways in which the New York Police Department and the city’s politicians treated the murdered men, the community as a whole and those pleading for action as second-class citizens. The final episode aired on Sunday.“Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer”This four-part Netflix series about the search for Richard Ramirez, who terrorized California with a brutal and unpredictable rampage that lasted just over a year in the mid-1980s, is about much more than who he was and what he did. It’s instead anchored in the recollections of survivors, victims’ families, journalists who worked on the case, and primarily Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno, detectives who devoted themselves tirelessly to hunting for Ramirez.While this series, from 2021, doesn’t minimize the horrors of the crimes (be warned, there is crime-scene footage), it, like “Last Call,” conveys an uncanny sense of time and place, highlighting the mentality of the day in the communities affected and the shortcomings of the available technology. Be prepared to be stunned by mistakes made by law enforcement and by political leaders who jeopardized the frantic search.Podcast“This Is Actually Happening,” Episode 259:“What If You Survived a Serial Killer?”I have listened to dozens of episodes of this podcast, in which regular people simply tell the stories of staggering, often wrenching, events that have altered the course of their lives. It epitomizes my favorite format across true crime: stripped-down, no-frills first-person accounts that leave space for the gravity of the story to hit hard. And the stories explored on “This Is Actually Happening” run the gamut, which means there’s a good chance it will make another appearance on this list.This 2022 episode features Jane Boroski, the only known survivor of the Connecticut River Valley killer, whose identity is still unknown. He murdered at least seven women over a decade starting in the late 1970s, but in this podcast, the details of his crimes are put to the side in favor of giving Boroski — who was attacked when she was 22 years old and seven months pregnant, after she’d stopped for a soda on the way home from a county fair — room to discuss who she was before, during and after the attack, and who she is now.Also, thoughtfully, this podcast includes highly specific warnings in the show notes of each episode page to ensure that listeners are aware of what sensitive topics will be discussed.Television“Mindhunter”This gripping and moody Netflix drama — executive-produced by its creator, Joe Penhall, along with David Fincher and Charlize Theron — sadly won’t see a third season, Fincher confirmed this year, but the first two are more than worth the price of admission (that being a slice of your sense of security). Based on the memoir “Mindhunter: Inside the F.B.I.’s Elite Serial Crime Unit,” the show dramatizes the creation of the F.B.I.’s real Behavioral Science Unit, where the concept of a serial killer began. And while the central trio of characters — Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff), an F.B.I. hostage negotiator increasingly unsettled by the emergence of a disturbing theme; the behavioral-science specialist Bill Tench (Holt McCallany); and the psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) — are fictional, the serial killers that appear are all based on real people, with casting that is eerily true to life.It starts in 1977, with David Berkowitz (Oliver Cooper), who was known as the “Son of Sam,” and moves on to, among others, Ed Kemper, the “Coed Killer” (Cameron Britton, who won an Emmy for the role) and Dennis “B.T.K.” Rader (Sonny Valicenti, still only listed as an A.D.T. serviceman in the credits). The genius of “Mindhunter,” though, is that it’s — as The Times’s TV critic James Poniewozik put it when the first season was released in 2017 — “more academic than sensationalistic,” with the stomach-turning events rarely spelled out in blood, but instead explored through hushed conversations. More

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      ‘The Unknown Country’ Review: A Granddaughter’s Road Trip

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      Lily Gladstone’s achingly measured performance braided with the actual stories from nonprofessional actors makes Morrisa Maltz’s film a memorable road trip.Snow-bordered highways, a cat winking its jade eye, the tentative yet always observant expressions of the main character Tana (Lily Gladstone) are among the low-key pleasures of “The Unknown Country,” the director-writer Morrisa Maltz’s luminously photographed, delicately paced road movie.After the death of her grandmother, whom she cared for, Tana accepts an invitation to attend her cousin’s wedding in South Dakota. She hasn’t been with her Oglala Lakota family since she was eight.Tana’s wintry drive from Minneapolis to her cousin Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux’s in Spearfish, S.D., is just the first leg in a journey that will take her to the Pine Ridge Reservation and southward to Texas, as she traces an itinerary taken from her grandmother’s photo album. One picture shows Tana’s grandmother as a young woman, a craggy vista in the distance, and finding where the photo was taken starts to shape Tana’s sojourn.Shangreaux, her husband, Devin, and their daughter, Jasmine, are among the performers here portraying themselves. In the film’s most inventive, gently disruptive gesture, the nonprofessional cast members’ actual stories are recounted in their voice-overs. Think of these mini-documentary profiles — of a waitress (Pam Richter), a gas station attendant (Dale Leander Toller), a motor lodge owner (Scott Stampe), and the nonagenarian Florence R. Perrin, a two-stepping mainstay at the Western Kountry Klub in Midlothian, Texas, as rest stops in Tana’s trip.Gladstone, who stars in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon,” delivers a performance that is hushed and anchoring. But the film’s gentle detours into the real-life stories remind us that it is the people met on the road that so often make the trip memorable.The Unknown CountryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Kokomo City’ Review: Dispatches From the Down Low

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      The director D. Smith’s new documentary follows four Black transgender women, who talk about how they got into sex work.The documentary “Kokomo City” features interviews with people who aren’t often given the chance to publicly share their life stories. The film follows four Black transgender women, who speak directly to the camera about how they got into sex work and what they learned about human nature once they got there.The film’s vivacious interviews take place in personal, bare settings, as the film’s subjects put on makeup and get dressed. One by one, the interviewees — Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silver — share candid stories of how they sustain themselves in a profession whose clients can quickly turn toward violence.In a tragic reminder of the film’s life-or-death stakes, one of the documentary subjects, Koko Da Doll, was fatally shot in April, just months after the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. But here, Koko brims with vitality, ambition and insight. This is not a maudlin film; instead it is a movie with heroines who fight tooth and nail for their lives and their self-worth.The director D. Smith, who is also transgender, shoots her subjects in black and white. She uses music to emphasize episodes of their stories, with comic record scratches and jaunty melodies underlying their madcap recollections. Smith also utilizes actors for re-enactments — unnamed performers roll down car windows and peel off waistbands as the film’s subjects describe their work in voice-over.Smith’s style doesn’t break new ground in documentary filmmaking. At times, her movie feels diminished by comparison to landmarks from queer documentary history, films like “Portrait of Jason” (1967) and “Paris is Burning” (1990), both of which used surreal images, experimental editing and offscreen sound to complicate the relationship between performance and reality. By comparison, Smith’s style is more slickly commercial, at the cost of artistic power, with a run time that feels too short for the amount of insight its subjects offer. What feels fresh, though, is the palpable trust between the person asking the questions and the people answering them. Smith’s approach grants respect to women who are often dehumanized, even in their most intimate settings.Each woman proves herself to be a marvelous investigator, a theoretician of human sexuality with a lifetime of evidence to report. Their stories range from reflections on clients who prefer to remain unseen to memories of near murder to the economic benefits of gender-affirming surgery. But most important, Daniella, Koko, Liyah and Dominique provide a record of their own extraordinary lives, one that resonates with clarity and compassion.Kokomo CityRated R for nudity, sexual content, language and references to violence. Running time: 1 hour 13 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Bobi Wine: The People’s President’ Review: A Pop Star Turns Politician

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      Uganda has been under authoritarian rule for decades. Wine has doggedly challenged its leader, and this documentary shows the price he’s paid.The pop-culture personage turned politician is not so novel a figure as it used to be. But the Ugandan pop singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, who goes by the stage name Bobi Wine, has earned, by way of his courage and resilience, the special consideration this documentary affords him.“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” opens by laying out the situation in Wine’s East African country: its leader, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, having seized power in 1986 (several years after the military strongman sank the country into civil war), has shown no inclination to give it up. Wine was vocal in his opposition to the regime, but after the 2015 election, when Museveni engineered an amendment to the Constitution rescinding the presidential age limit, the pop singer-turned-politician decided to run for office.Wine the campaigner is cheerful and stylish. He and his cadre dress all in red. He cuts songs whose lyrics function as policy planks: “To free ghetto people we must educate/but education is expensive.”By 2017, Wine is an elected member of Parliament and votes against Museveni’s scheme. The autocrat’s vindictive response is relentless, and lasts years. Wine is jailed, emerging sick and limping. He flies to the States in 2018 to seek treatment — he claims his jailers poisoned him — and gain publicity. When he runs for president against Museveni, in 2021, things really ramp up.The directors Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp seem to have had intimate access to Wine and his family, and this, along with their clear admiration for the crusader, doesn’t always work in the movie’s favor. The documentary’s raw material arguably could have yielded a more powerful fit with a tighter edit. Nevertheless, this is a mostly engaging portrait.Bobi Wine: The People’s PresidentRated PG-13 for violence. In English and Swahili with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Happiness for Beginners’ Review: Live, Laugh, Hike

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      Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes star in “Happiness for Beginners,” an outdoorsy rom-com that’s inoffensive to a fault.In Happiness for Beginners,” directed by Vicky Wight, the “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” star Ellie Kemper portrays a divorced 30-something, Helen, on a journey of self-discovery and romance. Wight’s second adaptation of a novel by Katherine Center (after the 2020 drama “The Lost Husband”), the movie trades in warm-and-fuzzy predictability, where the most uprooting event imaginable for Kemper’s character is falling in love with her brother’s best friend, Jake (Luke Grimes), on a group hiking excursion along the Appalachian Trail.“Happiness for Beginners” is inoffensive to a fault. Its gestures toward comedy largely stem from the ragtag, Patagonia-vested team of hikers surrounding the two lovers. Guided by a zealous leader, Beckett (Ben Cook), the group falls into stock stereotypes — an overconfident hunk, a self-deprecating gay man — who act as a ho-hum Greek chorus to Helen and Jake’s budding relationship. The movie is earnest when it wants to be, like when Jake recites poetry to Helen, but consistently backpedals to jokes about the hikers’ ineptitude and getting freaky in the woods. It’s as if the film is apologizing for its own tenderness.Kemper and Grimes have enough chemistry to keep the plot afloat, when it doesn’t feel like it’s gingerly treading water. Rather than shooting for the fences in grand gestures or raunchy humor, as so many rom-coms do, “Happiness for Beginners” stays polite. It’s destined to be thrown on in the background of a well-kept Airbnb after a long day of hiking in the Northeast.Happiness for BeginnersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘El Agua’ Review: After the Flood, the Legends

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      This film from Elena López Riera follows what happens when floods drench a village in southeastern Spain.In the southeastern Spanish village where the director Elena López Riera grew up — and where her debut feature, “El Agua,” is set — water is both a boon and a curse. This dry region doesn’t get enough rain for its lemon and orange crops, but when it does pour, there are frequently devastating floods. And as is often the case with forces we cannot control or understand, it’s the village’s women who are blamed for nature’s caprices.In “El Agua,” aquatic myths ensnare the teenage dreams of 17-year-old Ana (Luna Pamies). In a series of documentary interviews interspersed throughout the film, locals relate the myth of the women who have water “inside them,” who disappear whenever a flood arrives. Then there is the curse that supposedly afflicts Ana, her mother (Nieve de Medina) and her grandmother (Bárbara Lennie), three fiercely independent women who live together. Ana yearns to leave the stifling village and finds hope in the mysterious José (Alberto Olmo), who claims to have returned to the village after a trip abroad.The movie weaves together several threads, of which Ana’s coming-of-age is the weakest: Her adolescent rebellions and her fling with José play out rather predictably, never quite evoking the lust or portent that the film’s folklore suggests. But “El Agua” succeeds as a portrait of the village’s traditions, both manual and cultural, brought to life by a largely nonprofessional cast (including Pamies, a striking discovery). Scenes involving pigeon races, farmers working the land with their hands, and women caring for and grooming each other all glow with a tactile sense of naturalism, which makes the documentary footage of floods that closes the film all the more gutting.El AguaNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More