At first glance, it might seem like Pablo Larraín’s last two films share only a couple of superficial commonalities: they are both biopics in the sense they tell stories of real-life people, Princess Diana in 2021’s “Spencer” and Augusto Pinochet in 2023’s “El Conde”; and they have both premiered in competition at the glitzy Venice Film Festival.
Alas, scratch the surface and both films stand as an unlikely diptych about dysfunctional families dealing with the generational sins that have made and broken their bloodlines. While “Spencer” harnessed horror tropes to illustrate the breakdown of the British Royal Family during an infamous Christmas break in their luxurious countryside estate, “El Conde” imagines Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire readying himself for death after no longer seeing the point of living a life where he is known as a corrupt, scamming thief and not the legendary leader he believes himself to be.
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Two of Larraín’s frequent collaborators spearhead “El Conde” with contrasting yet equally efficient turns: Jaime Vadell as the decrepit vampire Pinochet and Alfredo Castro as Fyodor, a flamboyant Russian butler and the general’s loyal righthand man. Both have uncoincidentally featured in the director’s trilogy tackling the Chilean dictatorship, 2008’s “Tony Manero,” 2010’s “Post Mortem” and 2012’s “No.” Despite seesawing between lavish Hollywood biopics and small Chilean productions, the filmmaker’s fascination with the military regime remained a lingering presence in his films. In the gap left by the physical presence of Pinochet stood proddings at the ever-present ripples of tyranny and careful examinations of the seemingly undefeatable power structures that revolve around catching and trapping those ignorant to their cruel machinations.
If in his previous films about the regime Larraín often opted for subtlety, in “El Conde” elusiveness is a foreign notion. It is thrilling to watch the director repeatedly hit the nail in the head without much desire—or care—to engage with subtext. Here, Pinochet’s extensive list of heinous crimes is read plainly and in great detail by Carmencita (Paula Luchsinger), a nun-slash-accountant brought into the Pinochet reclusive Patagonian ranch to gather and cash in all the general’s many shady financial affairs. Like the “Succession” trio, the Pinochet spawn is hungry for the laurels but blissfully ignorant to the perils, swarming around the young accountant like a pack of clueless, clumsy wolves waiting for a meaty paycheck.
In this balance, Carmencita works as both a physical reminder of the divine in her passion and commitment to God and the human in her relentless quest to diligently iron out all bureaucracies. She arrives in Pinochet’s life as a judge in the land of the Lord and the layman and unafraid to confront every single member of the family in their misdeeds, her biting sarcasm used to mock the clan’s clueless belief in their righteous innocence. It is clear, then, why Larraín often frames Luchsiner as Renée Jeanne Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928), as his heroine is, too, a woman willing to gamble with the horrors of torture for the sake of her morals.
One might be tempted to condemn such blatant symbology in Larraín’s riotous denunciation of fascism, but it would be foolish to require patient subtlety from such an film at a time when South America is once again haunted by the ghosts of a very recent violent right-wing past. “El Conde” will land on Netflix globally just a month after anti-corruption campaigner and Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated in cold blood after leaving a rally in Quito and less than a year after Brazil overturned Bolsonaro’s fascist regime. Conversatives took control of Uruguay in 2019 after fifteen years of a left-wing government and Paraguay and Ecuador have elected right-wing Presidents in the last two years in a wave of conservatism that threatens to bring South America back to the dark ages of the 1970s and 80s.
On his director’s statement for “El Conde,” the Chilean filmmaker fittingly described his film as “An allegorical reminder of why history needs to repeat itself in order to remind us of how dangerous things can become.” And it is, indeed, very much that. But it is also a vividly realized and deliciously bonkers satire unafraid to always push a little bit harder, to take its audience a little bit further. Its twist, which I hope all of you reading get to experience in blissful ignorance, is a rewarding culmination of Larraín’s thematic interests and political frustrations so roaringly on the nose it would have easily tanked a film lacking the daringness to wear its on the noseness on its chest. Luckily, this isn’t the case. [B+]
“El Conde” premieres on Netflix on September 15th.
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