EL CONDE (2023)

Facile writer/director Pablo Larraín had a ‘lightbulb’ moment reimagining Chilean Dictator General Augusto Pinochet, the military chief who ousted democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende in the ‘70s, as an eternal, self-regenerating Vampire.  Alas, it’s such a good idea, he never bothered to figure out exactly what to do with his deliciously subversive concept.  After lovely PINK opening credits, we stick with monochrome, stepping all the way back to the French Revolution where we meet Pinoche(t), newly vampirized and slurping blood from Marie Antoinette’s freshly lopped head*, vowing revenge against all revolutions!  After that, it’s no great leap to Chile’s military coup & Pinochet’s staggering human rights violations, violent repression and notorious ‘disappearances.’  Yet Larraín appears uninterested, jumping past Pinochet’s 20-yr reign-of-terror to detail some fantasy retirement where he plots on a vast ranch with (and against) his family (wife, five kids - all mortal) over stocks, bonds & cash.  Design & effects all simple, elegant, effective (cityscape flights especially well handled), and the addition of a specially trained Nun/Accountant sent in to equitably divide (or is it bring down?) the ill-gotten estate.  The film wonderfully cast, Paula Luchsinger’s nun

a dead ringer for Falconetti in Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARK/’28

adding an accidental (?) mordant touch to gruesome doings like fresh human hearts being whipped up in an old Dan Ackroyd Bass-O-Matic for rejuvenating smoothies.  A pick-me-up that comes in handy when Pinochet’s Mom/Lover shows up in the form of (wait for it) Margaret Thatcher.  Yikes!  But it’s one thing to make a Vampire film; quite another to vamp your way past what first seemed an irresistible idea.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Madame Tussauds not too far from this scenario, ‘borrowing’ Marie Antoinette’s head before burial to make an impression for her start-up museum.  True story!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Behind this fabulist version: Patricio Guzmán’s THE BATTLE OF CHILE/’75.  http://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-battle-of-chile-la-batalla-de-chile.html