A master in the art of biographical films, Pablo Larraín signs, with El Conde, his most enigmatic work to date. For the 50th anniversary of Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état, the filmmaker rehabilitates the dictator into an embittered 250-year-old vampire who, immortal, only asks to die. Unconvincing in its treatment of Chilean political history, this delicious absurd comedy nevertheless remains an effective allegory on the fragility of our democracies.
“El Conde” (The Count). Pinochet was sometimes nicknamed this way by his supporters, who wanted to ennoble him. However, the portrait that Larraín gives in his film is unflattering.
The filmmaker first retraces the character’s life using a long explanatory introduction. A voice-over with an improbable British accent – whose identity is revealed at the very end – tells us that Pinochet was born “Pinoche”, a child vampire who ended up in a Paris orphanage at the time of the French Revolution. A loyal subject of Louis XVI, although a deserter from his army, he swears to avenge him by fighting “against all revolutions” when he witnesses the execution of Marie-Antoinette.
Immortal, therefore, Pinoche fakes his own death one day and then wanders anonymously from one country to another. Successively fighting the revolutionary forces of Haiti, Russia and Algeria, he finally settled in Chile, “this country of orphaned peasants”, where he was renamed Pinochet, and tried to “become king”. We know the rest.
Larraín off the beaten track
The filmmaker summarizes in broad strokes the years of the dictatorship to essentially tell the setbacks of Pinochet after his death – also simulated, of course, in 2006. We thus find the protagonist in our time, disillusioned, recluse in the desert with his wife . Disappointed with his “ungrateful” fellow citizens who are now tarnishing his reputation and pursued by his heirs who want his legacy, he has only one wish: to die, once and for all.
It was probably to be expected that Larraín would be interested in Pinochet’s legacy on the occasion of the 50e anniversary of the coup d’état in which he overthrew the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende. After all, Larraín made a trilogy about dictatorship, culminating with No (2012), on the referendum which led to the restoration of democracy in 1988.
From an aesthetic point of view, however, nothing in his filmography suggested such a UFO. If he reconnects here with the candid humor of Neruda and the ambition of a tortured character study Spencer, the filmmaker explores fantasy and history like never before. In fact, his film turns out to be completely absurd, but remains full of historical references and thoughtful socio-political comments, intelligently put together in a well-written screenplay, worthy of its prize in Venice.
Mix of genres
Larraín also moves easily between comedy and drama. It goes from very funny scenes, where, for example, Pinochet flies away with his cape and military uniform in order to suck the blood of new victims, to great moments of poetry. We think of the magnificent choreography of a young sister who, when she understands that she has become a vampire, flies away and rejoices in her eternal youth by dancing in the sky with the grace of a ballerina.
The great beauty of moments like this is mainly due to the film’s captivating soundtrack as well as its impeccable photo direction, marked by contrasting black and white, superb compositions and moving bodies filmed in wide angle reminiscent of almost the style of Béla Tarr.
We only regret that Larraín did not delve further into his reflections on the climate of fear that reigned in Chile during the dictatorship. Certainly, it deals with the violence committed during the Pinochet regime and the money laundering scandals that followed him throughout his life, but it remains on the surface. We are also surprised to find the character sympathetic at the beginning of the film, the tone is so light and the narration so candid. But the last scenes amply justify this approach and reveal a delicious outcome that cannot be divulged here.