Earlier this year I watched Pablo LarraÃn’s Ema -it was the first non-English, non-biographical film from him I’d seen and I liked it quite a bit. It is a wild, freaky, sexy movie about a queer woman’s determination to reconnect with her pyromaniac son -quite a degree removed from the like of Jackie and Spencer, indicating that while he’s been identified in the western world by methodical biopics, in his native Chile, LarraÃn is something more of an eccentric. I haven’t seen movies like No or Neruda that would back this up, but El Conde certainly does: a bleak satire film set in the final years in the life of Augusto Pinochet that re-imagines the infamous dictator as a centuries-old vampire.
I suppose casting the great monster of your nation’s history as a literal supernatural monster is one way of reckoning with their legacy -surprised Germany or Spain hasn’t tried that yet. It’s a bizarre idea, one devoid of any nuance; Pinochet’s story in the film opens on him being an aristocrat survivor of the French Revolution, and driven ever afterwards by the perceptively unjust execution of the elites of that country -Marie Antoinette especially. He often refers to Chile and it’s people now that he’s been ousted as “ungrateful”. And there’s a reveal in the third act that very bluntly comments on the “origin” of Pinochet and his place in the world politics of the time he came to power in.
Jaime Vadell stars as the parasitic old cretin, framed in a state of luxury yet diminished power –almost like Lear. Vadell plays brusquely all of the lingering anger and spite that seems to keep him alive as he awaits death –he is starving himself of blood, which his non-vampire family is concerned over. It’s not out of any feeling for him though, rather concern over the minutia of their inheritance. LarraÃn and co-writer Guillermo Calderón haven’t any sympathy for the family –though perhaps due to libel reasons, they rename all of the children and family colleagues. Only Pinochet himself and his wife Lucia (Gloria Münchmeyer) are explicitly identified –her great desire being for her husband to make her a vampire as well. In the absence of this, or any affection at all, she is having an affair with the White Russian butler Fyodor (Alfredo Castro) –the only surviving vampire Pinochet turned.
Shot in black and white, the movie is almost exclusively set at an isolated estate on a rock over the sea that evokes the cold and barren topography of Bergman films. There’s a kind of beautiful emptiness all around, thrown into relief especially in scenes where Pinochet goes flying -a particularly unsettling kind of flying where he seems carried on the wind by billowing cape. Often, the vampire imagery puts you in mind of other stylistically engaging examinations of creatures of the night like The Hunger or A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. In at least one scene, the erotic connotations cannot be ignored. And all this does present a rather notable problem: LarraÃn’s aesthetics and flourishes do not compliment the nature of this story. They are too elegant for their subjects, and even for the attitude the filmmakers espouse towards them. Pinochet and his family are ridiculed in a largely cynical way -the bluntness of their evil politics are emphasized. To some degree, Augusto and Lucia are caricatured more holistically, but the impression is still one of formidable power -just exaggerated, and I don’t know that it leaves the satire very strong.
Of course, I’m lost on several details. The movie spends a chunk of time dealing explicitly in specific controversies of the Pinochet era that go over the head of most non-Chileans. Particularly related to laundering schemes, as an auditor Carmen (Paula Luchsinger) comes in to investigate and compile a dossier of the family’s finances. These interviews are full of pointed references and allegations that Carmen, as a kind of audience surrogate, takes delight in grilling them on. Granted, she is there with an ulterior purpose -a double-ulterior purpose as it turns out- concerning exorcising Pinochet’s vampirism. The captivating Luchsinger, who had had a memorable part in Ema, is perhaps the film’s greatest stand-out, as she sharply manipulates the family, and Pinochet especially, with intense confidence and a stunning charisma irresistible to LarraÃn’s camera.
The film is narrated and often excessively so in English by Margaret Thatcher (Stella Gonet) -who eventually shows up in person with a shrewd allegorical relationship to Pinochet (a role that just as well could have been filled by Henry Kissenger to be honest). All throughout, her exposition is coloured by ironic frankness, callously toned observations and context. This scathing commentary is a lot easier to grasp for non-Chileans as it implicates the larger powers than Chile that facilitated Pinochet’s regime and were apathetic allies to his crimes. Clearly that’s the take on Thatcher here as she shows up in the last act to directly protect Pinochet from the schemers. There’s greater violence here, wilder plot beats, and also an unwavering bleakness. Both the conclusion of the story and what it seems to stand in for metaphorically are rather grim summations of the post-Pinochet world, how the evils he and his kin wreaked still manage to linger and not just for Chile. The precise meaning there is a little ambiguous, and it might have been a mistake for LarraÃn to lean so much into a dour tone coming into the end stretch -much as it still features that ridiculous yet stylized vampire miasma. Solemnity does not suit its precepts much.
El Conde is a movie that feels like it is in conversation somewhat with last year’s Argentina, 1985 -another South American movie reckoning with the legacy of a dictatorial regime. And I think it’s noteworthy how where that film took a very conventional biographic courtroom drama approach, this one is far more extravagant and unusual while circulating some of the same points. Argentina, 1985 is inherently self-congratulatory over how it dealt with war criminals, but El Conde in it’s wry cynicism, is pessimistic -insinuating that Pinochet and those evils that fuelled him never died. The attitude is that making him a blood-sucking, soul-destroying monster is merely literalizing his impact. And though I think the way El Conde handles its satire is flawed and that it makes poor choices in setting its tone, it ultimately has something more authentic to say -not only to Chile, but the United Kingdom, the United States, any of the powers that legitimized Pinochet and what he did to that country. It is a weird little movie, but one that warrants real consideration.
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