TONY MANERO (Chile)

[oscar jubis]

Manero is the world-famous character played by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Raul, a 52 year-old thief from Santiago, is obsessed with him. Ricardo Larrain's second film is set during the week leading to Raul's appearance on a televised Manero impersonator contest. The time is, of course, the late 70s when Chile is under the grip of the Pinochet dictatorship. Raul assists an old woman who's just been robbed and, once inside her apartment, bludgeons her to death and takes her color tv. Did her comments about Pinochet's "pretty" blue eyes and Mapuches (Chile's indigenous group) being a "bad race" provoke him? No, we soon learn that Raul kills without compunction to get whatever he wants and the cops don't care. They are solely concerned with stamping out any sign of political resistance.

If movies are vessels to worlds to which we don't have access or windows that give us views of them, Tony Manero takes us where we've never been. Raul's pathetic little kingdom is a dingy 3-table luncheonette with a raised wooden platform in the back for dancing and performing. A fat matron who does the cooking, a younger woman and her teenage daughter, and an ineffectual young man acquiesce to the somber and dominant Raul. They rehearse for a weekly show they put on as Raul prepares for the contest and strives to replace the creaky platform with a glass one, lit from below like the one in Travolta's film.

A viewer could regard Tony Manero simply as character study set at a specific historical moment but most will probably draw a number of parallels Larrain seems to be encouraging us to make. Two strike me as particularly compelling. Pinochet and Raul are both amoral murderers who act with impunity and, secondly, Raul's sexual impotence mirrors the Chilean people's inability to present a unified front capable of ousting the dictator. Moreover, Raul's adoption of a foreign celluloid hero to emulate implies a loss of native identification figures at a time that Pinochet was importing American socioeconomic models ill-suited to serve Chile's needs.

Larrain serves up this pathetic psychopath of a character that somehow_ is it because of his fierce drive to succeed and/or the social context?_I couldn't hate. Ultimately, what makes Tony Manero particularly resonant is the rich interplay between its dramatic text and the sociopolitical context.

Tony Manero is a Lorber Films release.

[Chris Knipp]

The parallel between the amoral petty criminal and casual murderer and fantasist and the corrupt regime is obvious, the sexual impotence and the nation's powerlessness to resist oppression a good addition on your part. Did you not notice, or forget, that i had reviewed this in connection with the NYFF of 2008? http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=20717#post20717 I think I speak for many in saying in that review, "At times Larrain's film seems crude and clumsy, but it's nonetheless hard to get out of your head." The movie has been trickling out into US release for some little while -- reviewed in NYC in June, coming to the Bay Areas shortly. If you have seen and could compare this with Larrain's previous feature, that might be useful. I have not seen it. It's been noted that the camera follows the star and co-writer Alfredo Castro like the Dardennes, but without their humanistic sympathies. Many also note the filme's grimy, faded look; Hoberman uses the word "murky." You feel befouled and dirty after watching this, but you don't forget it, as I noted. Also notable, because haunting, I think, is that Castro resembles Al Pacino, but as I said, a downmarket Pacino who'll never see a fat paycheck.

My review:

PABLO LARRAIN: TONY MANERO (2008)

(CK September 18, 2008)

Low life brutality and sleazy aspirations in a reign of terror

The protagonist of this film from Chile set in 1978 Santiago at the height of Augusto Pinochet's reign of terror is a murderer and petty thief whose only goal in life is to dance like John Travolta's character Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. It's already a year later, but Fever's still playing and Raul (Alfredo Castro) goes to watch in an empty theater, repeating Travolta's lines with a heave accent and mimicing his arm gestures when he dances. Raul is the lead dancer, if it makes any sense to say that, in a shabby cantina where an older woman, a younger woman, his middle-aged girlfriend, and a youth all seem to adore him even though he is tired and fifty-two and can't get an erection any more. Outside it's a quietly terrifying world where soldiers patrol the streets in open trucks with rifles raised and plainclothes agents stop people at random and you can get shot for being out of place or having political fliers.

Early on Raul beats an old woman he's just taken home after she's been mugged. He seems to have killed her, just to get her little color TV. He kills again, each time without any qualms, to get something. He smashes the cantina stage floor and is bargaining with a dealer in loose building materials for glass bricks to make the stage floor like the movie disco, lit from below. He also wants to compete for "Tony Manero of Chile" on a little TV contest show.

At times Larrain's film seems crude and clumsy, but it's nonetheless hard to get out of your head. Obviously Raul's behavior is a metaphor for the morally bankrupt-from-the-start Pinochet regime and the film does an excellent job of conveying the absolute sleaziness of absolutely everything--a terrible world pushed into existence by the CIA and perhaps now similarly dominated by slick new US commercial products like the Travolta picture. Just as Raul will kill to get his pseudo-disco floor effect (which is totally shoddy), the others on his little neighborhood dance team will betray each other to stay in good with the despicable regime. Raul walks away from his heinous crimes with no fear of capture; the regime is too busy perpetrating its own crimes and its own terror to be bothered with him.

The concentration on the goings and comings of Raul gives the picture unity, and the little cantina crew has a classic quality. This is down-market, black-humor Fellini. Wilma (Elsa Poblete) runs the place. She claims to adore Raul and want to run away to him (to where?). He's stuck with Cony (Amparo Noguera), but now prefers her young, possibly pregnant daughter Pauli (Paola Lattus). A willing helper but potential threat is the young man in the group, Goyo (Hector Morales), who is involved in anti-Pinochet activities, but also wants to compete in the tacky TV talent contest for the Tony Manero prize against Raul. Raul sees to that, in the crudest and sleaziest manner possible.

One day Raul goes to the movie to see Saturday Night Fever and it's been replaced by Grease. You can bet there's hell to pay for the projectionist. It feels like the movie will stoop to anything, but then, so would a dictator. The raw, hand-held camera work helps maintain the down-and-dirty intensity, as does faded, dingy-looking color. As Leslie Felprin notes in the Variety review, the camera follows Raul around as doggedly as the Dardenne brothers have tracked their protagonists, but without any of the humanism or positive endings the Dardennes would provide. The action has a picaresque quality that makes it seem plausible: you just watch in mild horror to see what happens next. To top it all off, Alfredo Castro, in the brave and haunting lead performance, looks a lot like Al Pacino--a Pacino who hasn't been prettied up and will never see a fat paycheck.

This is Pablo Larrain's second feature, and a selection of the New York Film Festival of 2008. It was part of the Directors Fortnight series at Cannes this year. Theatrical opening in France December 17.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks for posting your review here.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
The parallel between the amoral petty criminal and casual murderer and fantasist and the corrupt regime is obvious, the sexual impotence and the nation's powerlessness to resist oppression a good addition on your part.
Thanks. I think this observation is also important: "Raul's adoption of a foreign celluloid hero to emulate implies a loss of native identification figures at a time that Pinochet was importing American socioeconomic models ill-suited to serve Chile's needs".

I think I speak for many in saying in that review, "At times Larrain's film seems crude and clumsy, but it's nonetheless hard to get out of your head."
I think the cinematography and the mise-en-scene perfectly suit the themes and the nature of the protagonist. A couple of times, for instance, the camera is pointed at Raul but he is out of focus. I am convinced this is done on purpose. What I failed to mention in my review is the masterfully demure way Larrain shoots the murder scenes. Their brutality registers with maximum impact but the gore is de-emphasized. For example, both the killing of the widow at the beginning and the killing of the guy who supplies the glass blocks show Raul's actions within the frame but not what the effect these actions have on the bodies of his victims.

The movie has been trickling out into US release for some little while -- reviewed in NYC in June, coming to the Bay Areas shortly.
It opened July 3rd at the Cinema Village. I think it played at our Beach Cinematheque a couple of weeks ago. I watched it first at the MIFF then I re-watched Friday when it played at the Cosford (not a huge crowd. I think that the trailer makes clear the film can be somewhat unpleasant.)

If you have seen and could compare this with Larrain's previous feature, that might be useful. I have not seen it.
I should make time to watch FUGA and comment later.

[Chris Knipp]

You're precise to the point of finicky about the dates (but why not) and I was a couple days off because I was going by the fact that a review by Hoberman is dated June 30. If I'd checked the calendar I'd have seen that the Friday opening day was July 3rd and June 30 as the day the Voice goes on the streets. The Cinema Village (http://www.cinemavillage.com/chc/cv/show_movie.asp?movieid=1573) run ended July 30.

I'm not so sure as you are that this is a good film or that all of its miserable, blurry look is intentional. Or, if it is, I'm not so sure that that is a really very good idea! But it's a dedicated performance by the star, Alfredo Castro. And I will certainly stand by the idea that it is one of the memorable cinematic experiences of the year that I can't get out of my head. (There are some good ones.) Yes, you are right, I suppose, that the "gore is de-emphasized." I don't know that there is any. The crimes are so affectless, they are without drama or excitement, barely noticed. I'm not sure their brutality "registers with maximum impact" or that it's meant to. "Masterfully dumure" is an odd way of putting it. But I get what you're saying; this is just a quibble about how to describe it. There is a numbness about the crimes. The man is an automaton.

I'll look forward to your report on Fuga and where will you get it to watch?

[oscar jubis]

Netflix.
The visual quality of the film is a consequence of the fact that it's a blowup to 35 mm from the original 16 mm stock used to shoot the scenes. The visual style of the film is intentional, made to look as something shot on-the-fly, clandestinely, back in the 1970s. It is perfectly suited to theme, treatment and period. That doesn't mean anyone has to like it.
The mise-en-scene is reticent and demure in that the scenes are blocked so that you know precisely what is being depicted without showing the physical devastation caused by Raul's murderous behavior. The sound design itself is most evocative during these scenes. I think TONY MANERO is brilliant.

[Chris Knipp]

"Demure" is a bit of an odd word to use there. It suggests primarily the deportment of a shy young girl, a virgin.

Agreed on the rest. It may be brilliant, but before anything it's repellent, though of course intentionally so. People who saw it at the NYFF press screenings thought it was good. I wasn't sure. But then as I keep saying, it stuck in my head. I will stop asking you to report on Fuga since indeed Netlifx has it and so I can watch it myself.

[Chris Knipp]

I see now that the Sundance Kabuki in San Francisco is going to be showing Tony Manerostarting September 11. I wonder if they're aware that September 11, 1973 was the day Salvador Allende was overthrown. Surely they must.

The week before they're showing Christophe Honore's La belle personne (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=21515#post21515) , which I saw at the BAMcinematek in NYC in March, only they're calling it The Beautiful Person here.

[Chris Knipp]

FUGA

I've now watched FUGA on a Netflix DVD. Some comments are below. Have you seen it, Oscar, and if so what's your opinion?

Larrain shows considerable dash in this first feature about a traumatized young composer, Eliseo Montalban (Benjamin Vicuna), whose memory of seeing his sister raped and murdered (over a piano) when he was a child is reawakened when the mysterious death of his female piano soloist during the premiere of his symphony leads him into madness. He disappears into an institution, till a mediocre musician, Ricardo Coppa (Gaston Pauls),trying to reconstruct his lost composition from writing on the sanatorium walls hidden under wallpaper, finds him, now working as a fisherman.

"Everything in this co-production between Argentina and Chile is preposterous and unbelievable," a Latin American reviewer wrote. Yet spite of the far fetched and melodramatic elements of the screenplay Larrain directs with conviction. The adult Eliseo (lovely name) appears crazy from the start, and Vicuña has presence though he alternates between poetical suffering and merely vacuousness. One believes in Eliseo because everybody else does but when he has his breakdown and massacres six grand pianos with an ax things become a little too bizarre. (Flashbacks to his childhood are well done; the boy actor too has a strong presence.)

Larrain doesn't have as good material to work with here as he was to have in 'Tony Manero,' either in terms of a central character or in the way of a socio-historical world with rich and disturbing overtones. This seems a little like something Francis Ford Coppola might have recently done -- but the doomed Italian family in Buenos Aires of Coppola's 'Tetro' is a much richer mix than Eliseo and his privileged parents, and the intermingling of Chilean and Argentinian elements and characters seems unconvincing to South American viewers and confusing to North American ones.

The title plays with the double meaning of the word "fuga" as both the musical form of the fugue, and "flight", since Eliseo goes into a flight from his traumas and his madness. But I guess that isn't any more profound than any other aspects of the screenplay.

Still, the element already there that was to flower in 'Tony Manero' is the ability Larrain has to delve into an utterly doomed, deranged world with unswerving focus and conviction. It just means so much more in the second film than in this polished but relatively empty debut.

[cinemabon]

One of those controversial films you either loved or hated. Rottentomatoes has no review of this film. (you could write the first) IMDB has mostly bad reviews.