Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel’s adaptation of Antonio Di Benedetto’s novel exposes the fetid rot of Eurocentrism that festers in empire strongholds. Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) is an Americano (born in South America), and functionary of the Spanish empire whose job as a judge traps him in stagnant 18th-century Paraguay while he waits – possibly for ever – for a transfer from the king. “Europe,” says his glamorous, uninterested crush, Luciana Piñares de Luenga (Lola Dueñas), sweaty, white regency wig on top of her dark hair, “is best remembered by those who were never there.”

Some will be seduced by the tragicomic potential of Zama’s existential purgatory (helped along by the 50s-style beach-pop soundtrack by Los Indios Tabajaras, a nod, perhaps, to the novel’s publication in 1956); others by the hyperreal quality of the lush green swamps, as beautifully, tackily bright as a 60s TV show. What’s most compelling, though, is the way Martel skewers the history of colonialism without voyeuristically indulging in the moment of conquest. She’s more interested in reappraising how we recall its on-the-ground failings and the traces of colonial violence that make the film’s indigenous characters (and in one mirage-like scene, a llama) behave in weird, subtle ways, her gaze itself a vivid, drily funny act of decolonisation.