Dir: Lucrecia Martel. Cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lola Dueñas, Matheus Nachtergaele, Juan Minujín, Nahuel Cano, Mariana Nunes. 15 cert, 115 mins

It’s been a decade or so since we last heard from Lucrecia Martel, the single most acclaimed filmmaker of Argentina’s New Wave, and a maker of taxing, sly, formally adventurous cinema not quite like anyone else’s. Her long-in-the-works project is Zama, an adaptation of the 1956 novel by Antonio di Benedetto, about a 17th century colonial bureaucrat losing the will to live at an outpost somewhere along the Paraguay River.

In this tricky piece, period drama is transformed into science fiction: an alien habitat with a hero who’s besieged, in surreal ways, by constant reminders of his inferiority. Played in a tour de force of flummoxed scowling by Daniel Giménez Cacho (Cronos, Bad Education), Diego di Zama used to be a “corregidor” – administrator of his own domain, with vague legends attached to his name. But he is much reduced in his current station, all dressed up, in his tricorn hat and official vestments, with nothing much to do but clutch the sword by his side and strike useless, heroic poses.

He’s caught out at the start by a group of naked women giving themselves a mud-bath by the riverside, while he lies supine in a dune looking stricken and sexually frustrated. Their mockery sets the tone. Zama is desperate to be reposted, practically anywhere, and reveals himself to be a pathetic hispanophile, dreaming of a Europe he’s never even seen. Every attempt he makes to upgrade his fortunes is thwarted amid the rot and heat haze: it takes two letters to the king to make him pay attention, and you can only apply once a year. No one’s in a huge hurry to help.

Martel’s earlier films were scalpel-wielding dissections of her country’s moral fibre. In 2009’s The Headless Woman, a middle-class heroine slid into freefall after her possible involvement in a hit-and-run accident. Zama goes even further in taking away the crutches of story. The idea is that di Benedetto’s hero, who sometimes puts you in mind of Don Quixote, is scraping the barrel in every way, and has nothing so purposeful as a clear narrative to call his own. There’s a murky backstory: married long ago, he has since had an invalid child he doesn’t even recognise with a local woman. His own living quarters are just a few sticks of furniture – the crown's property, not his – away from a mud hut.

He suffers hallucinations, but these bleed in and out of reality: Martel is not the kind of filmmaker to flash up neon signs announcing what’s imaginary and what’s not. The soundtrack, though, emits a lowering whine, as if entering a fugue state of nightmare, in which Zama’s self-worth is struck by paranoia, fever, spiralling indignities. Lines of dialogue are repeated with no acknowledgement they’ve been said before. His circular conversations with a teasing noblewoman (excellent Lola Dueñas) are attended by the creaking of a manually operated fan, handled by a silent black slave, who at least has a concrete job to do. Zama’s fears about becoming a laughing stock turn him into a grey, sweaty mess.

The film’s absurd take on empire is bone-dry but often ruthlessly funny. Even the animals seem to have Zama’s number: he tries to hold court with judicial rulings while a dog’s nose pokes curiously at him from the gallery. An extraordinary llama wanders into frame right behind him, while he learns that an uppity rival, not he, is in line for promotion. There’s a long stare from a horse which seems to wonder why he’s even bothering.

Martel works wonders in all these shots: she’s a wizard at compositions that make fun of the human beings within them, cropping them at the scalp with low beams or doorways, while using the chirping and twitter of insect life as a mocking chorus. The diabolical rigour of her technique makes every moment of weird spontaneity all the more startling.

At long last, in the final stretches, Zama gains a mission, to track down a feared, possibly mythical bandit called Vicuña Porto, and joins a horseback posse in the wilderness who have no idea what they’re doing. The insignia of authority mean nothing, of course: before long the men are stripped and subjected to rituals of body-painting by a hostile tribe. An attack in verdant marshland, with these rust-coloured natives springing up like fire ants, wakes the film violently from its stupor.

Before, and after, it’s a tough sit, not offering us much of a life raft, as Zama sinks further and further into this inescapable quagmire. An instant anachronism, a joke he himself doesn’t get, he’s also the impotent architect of his own undoing. Almost too well, and certainly too well to let us sit back comfortably, Martel has nailed colonialism as a living death.