Tag: Chile

Screening Room: ‘El Conde’ Dilutes the Horror of Pinochet

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, Film-Foreign, streamingLeave a comment

The new movie from Pablo Larrain (Ema, Spencer) has a decidedly different take on the horrors perpetrated by Augusto Pinochet during his reign of power in Chile.

My review is at PopMatters:

El Conde, an alternately ambitious and maddening attempt to reckon with one of the 20th century’s ugliest villains, does not take Pinochet at face value. Larraín and his frequent co-writer Guillermo Calderon do not dwell on the free market capitalist, career army officer, and power-mad dictator known by the world. Instead, they imagine Pinochet as a 250-year-old French vampire who nearly gets staked to death in the revolution. A reactionary from the jump, he wanders the world as a mercenary helping to put down revolutions in Russia and Haiti before ending up in South America under a new identity…

El Conde is on Netflix now. The trailer is here.

Screening Room: ‘A Fantastic Woman’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Awards, Film - New, Film-ForeignLeave a comment

The Oscar-nominated A Fantastic Woman, directed by Chile’s great Sebastian Lelio (Gloria), is playing now in limited release.

My review is at PopMatters:

The most romantic element of …  A Fantastic Woman comes early and its absence is never quite filled. Orlando (Francisco Reyes), a 57-year-old Santiago businessman with a gentle sort of gravitas, is finishing up his day at the office and heading out to meet his girlfriend. Walking into a dinner club, he pauses to listen to the beautiful singer of the mediocre band. As she croons a tart little ballad about how “your love is like yesterday’s newspaper”, Orlando watches with eyes that simply drink her in like someone newly smitten…

Here’s the trailer:

Now Playing: ‘Gloria’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, Film-ForeignLeave a comment

The sublime daffiness of Paulina García in 'Gloria'
The sublime daffiness of Paulina García in ‘Gloria’

gloria-poster1Chile’s submission for this year’s Foreign Film Academy Award, Gloria, doesn’t have the most instantly engaging of storylines: single woman tries to find love. But with deftly rambunctious storytelling and one of the greatest, most soulful performances you’re likely to see all year, it achieves tragicomic greatness.

Gloria is playing around the country right now in limited release. My review is at PopMatters:

…[The film] is shaded with both a dark melancholy and a bright, getting-on-with-it playfulness. Gloria endures more than her share of spirit-crushing moments, but these appear in between glimmers of joy that buffet her relentless persistence, her will not to sink into a sinkhole of near-retirement surrender. There’s no certainty that she will find any kind of new love again, or forge some new kind of bond with children. If she’s going to carve out a happy life, it will be in her hands, not dependent on approvals from her family, friends or lover…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘The Chilean Building’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

Macarena Aguiló’s melancholy documentary about her childhood spent in group safe homes with other children of Chilean revolutionaries is like some home movie for the generation who thought they could change not just the government, but the very idea of family itself…

The Chilean Building is playing now in limited release; it not near you it should be available on DVD and On Demand soon. My full review is at Film Journal International.

The trailer is here: