Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is a 250-year-old vampire, tired of life, who wishes to end his days after the crises and scandals he has caused.
In this week of the fiftieth anniversary of the coup d’état that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile, Pablo Larraín presents on the Netflix platform El Conde (The count) a crazy vampire story where the bloodthirsty dictator takes on the features of a 250-year-old vampire.
Winner of the Screenplay Prize at the Venice Film Festival with his accomplice Guillermo Calderón, Pablo Larraín (No, Neruda, Spencer, Jackie) imagined a fantastic universe in which General Pinochet is a former royalist worshiper of Marie-Antoinette, who fled France during the Revolution before finding refuge in Chile.
Some 250 years later, undermined by scandals, the deposed dictator (Jaime Vadell) wants to end his life. Hired by Pinochet’s children, who can no longer wait for their inheritance, a young French-speaking nun (Paula Luchsinger) tries to seduce the old vampire to better exorcise him. Even as his faithful servant (Alfredo Castro) hatches a plot with his wife (Gloria Münchmeyer). And the astonishing narrator with a British accent ends up intervening in the story.
This incredible satire, which exudes dark and offbeat humor, was shot in black and white in an almost Bergmanian aesthetic, with a hint of South American magical realism. As if Béla Tarr abandoned himself to a purely sardonic story or that Carl Theodor Dreyer had imagined a strategic and calculating Joan of Arc.
However, it is Irreversible by Gaspar Noé that we spontaneously think of at the beginning of the film, due to a horribly violent scene which announces a work gore as desired. Indeed, blood spurts when hearts freshly extracted from dying bodies are sent to the mixer, for a power shake unsavory, with extraordinary rejuvenating properties.
Larraín’s staging, meticulous and careful, dictates the rhythm of a story that is less contemplative than the Chilean filmmaker’s previous, more traditional filmed biographies, about Jackie Kennedy or Lady Diana Spencer, in particular. The symphonic and lyrical soundtrack lends itself wonderfully to this particularly cynical dystopia, coupled with a family fable about corruption, avarice and greed.
On Netflix
Fantasy comedy
El Conde (V.F.: The count)
Pablo Larraín
Jaime Vadell, Paula Luchsinger, Gloria Münchmeyer, Alfredo Castro
1h50