It’s impossible accurately to represent the horrors of the Pinochet regime but that hasn’t prevented Chilean master Pablo Larraín from fashioning a hat-trick of films – Tony Manero, Post Mortem and No – that dramatise aspects of the 17-year military dictatorship.
Imaginatively written by Larraín and Guillermo Calderón, El Conde reframes Augusto Pinochet in the only way that any movie could render his monstrousness: as a 250-year-old vampire, who, even now, is alive and snacking on Chilean hearts.
He’s not the only one out for blood.
In common with the hellish family get-together at the centre of Larraín’s soaring depiction of Princess Diana in Spencer, El Conde sees the elderly bloodsucker’s heirs gather around a remote location as his evil life force finally dwindles.
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They are joined by a book-keeper who, in keeping with the director’s talkier films – see The Club or Neruda – lists tax dodges, instances of nationalised theft, fake charities and the occasional death by helicopter drop as she sifts through the family finances.
The accountant is really a young nun named Carmencita (Paula Luchsinger), who has been dispatched by the Catholic Church to exorcise the devil from the ageing vampire but who is soon embedded in evil, in every possible way.
Shot in crystalline black and white by cinematographer Edward Lachman, Carmencita’s facsimile framing as Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc works as an ironic barb and as a reminder of the unholy common ground shared by the church and the junta.
Elsewhere, it’s full-blown telenovela madness. Pinochet’s scheming wife Lucía, played by Gloria Münchmeyer, is having an affair with vampire-butler Fyodor (Alfredo Castro), the White Russian who ran Pinochet’s death camps.
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Flashbacks, as narrated by the chillingly familiar voice of a certain British premier, depict the younger Pinochet as a Marie Antoinette fan who conveniently switched sides as the guillotine fell. (Although expected, when said narrator finally appeared on screen during the Venice premiere, she was greeted with jeers and merriment.)
A true original and deserving winner of the Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival, El Conde’s heart-feasting, sexual subplots and accusatory banter coalesce into an extended and unmissable Grand Guignol finale.
El Conde is released on Tuesday, September 12th
