El Conde

By Joanna Langfield

There are many delicious moments in Pablo Larrain’s vampire allegory. I just wish there had been more of them to sink our teeth into.

You can’t fault Larrain for not going there, as he creatively parallels a fantasy about the Chilian leader, Augusto Pinochet with the blood thirsty fascists of our times. It’s a cool conceit and certainly an ambitious one. There are moments as funny as other decidedly pointed political satires (yes, I’m thinking the gloriously absurd The Death of Stalin) and maybe more horrifying than the current horror movie fans may expect. All of this does make for some lip smacking fun, as we watch Pinochet, losing his zest for life, find it again when a nubile young nun shows up to, um, do his taxes. But, somewhere along the way, things feel repetitive, and just not as tempting as they signal they could be. Is it because the men and women of Pinochet’s circle are never really allowed to be human? To draw us in as they suck us dry?

Still, the film makes its points. And then makes them again. And again. But how marvelously they do so. Shot in vivid black and white by the brilliant Ed Lachman, we see beauty where there is none, which brings us closer to the dazzling and furious mash up that might have been.