El Conde – Pablo Larrain – Reviews

In recent years, Chilean director Pablo Larrain he experienced the lucky Hollywood bracket by talking about great female figures, from Jackie (biographical film about Jackie Kennedy with Natalie Portman) Spencer, the film about Princess Diana that earned Kristen Stewart an Oscar nomination. His next project Marywill instead be dedicated to the turbulent life Maria Callas, played by Angelina Jolie. In the middle of it El Condea film that, by combining the glamor and neuroses of its ultra-Western heroines, reminds us that Larraín is still a director tied to his land, with his political demands and an inherited rancor towards one of Chile’s key figures: Augusto Pinochet.

The film takes place fifty years after the 1973 coup, which left a general at the helm of an authoritarian and dictatorial regime from September 11 of that year to March 11, 1990. Larraín repeatedly addressed the generational trauma of a nation devastated by this long and bloody period, first in Tony Manero (2008), then in Post-mortem examination (2010)e No (2012). As for the director does not add anything new to what he has already told in these films, El Conde it remains a sharp, dark satire that this time goes straight to the heart of the issue – effectively the dictator.

El Conde is a dark comedy that starts with a very simple premise: Augusto Pinochet is a 250-year-old vampire. This is a creature that continued to suck the blood of its people even after the fall of the regime, dying while awaiting a trial that never ended. His real name is actually Claude Pinoch, he boasts a background as a French revolutionary and is tired of living. After faking his death in 2006, Pinochet, now retired with his wife and butler, begins to refuse human blood. However, a series of bloody murders in Santiago worries the dictator’s children: has Augusto started eating again? When will they be able to enjoy the fruits of their heritage?

This is the first time Larraín has touched on this genre and, in doing so, plays with the typical canons of vampire images: Pinochet flies like a bat, but he is aging, there is nothing exciting about him and, as is often the case in stories about dictators or politics, he looks more like a decadent mask . There is blood, there is horror, there are desert lands that manage to be gothic in their own way, thanks to the rich black and white imagery and photographs by Edward Lachman, which here are a little reminiscent of photographs from A girl walks home alone at night

Ana Lily Amirpour (another vampire movie).

El Conde This is not a perfect film: after a great start, Larraín gets a little lost halfway through, insisting a lot on political insults and little on the plot, in short, it becomes harder to digest and everything he wants to say he already says very well in the first act in an intriguing and funny. Larraín gives the film some flair Continuity with the children planning to finally receive their inheritance, and so everything develops between intrigues and flashbacks, which unfortunately slow down the absurd aspect of the film, which in this sense could have dared even more.

Despite this, Larrain won the screenplay award at Venice 80 for this film, probably because he knows how to give us breathtaking images that alone are enough to convey the horror, violence and fear of that period of Chilean history. From the young vampire Pinoch licking Marie Antoinette’s blood straight from the blade of the guillotine, to the ridiculous musical orchestra ready to play for him in the living room, past the charming nun called upon to investigate the finances of the “count” who flies gracefully, not like a bat, but more like a dove (and which is very reminiscent of René Falconetti de The Passion of Joan of Arc

).

Certainly El Conde it is the film that most touches on the figure of Pinochet in Larrain’s filmography, and yet it indulges in a disillusioned, pessimistic and deeply bitter humor that seems to leave no room for an ounce of light. This is not a film with angry tones, but Larren’s anger emanates from every frame, and in this he has his own strong personality. past, how can a Chilean come to an agreement with Augusto Pinochet? And this is one of those films that makes you want an Italian remake: we will release it, Knight.