‘El Conde’ Review: Larrain’s Brilliant and Twisted Satire About Fascism Has Bite | Venice

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

-Karl Marx

There’s certainly no more controversial figure in Chile than that of dictator Augusto Pinochet. He rose to power on September 11, 1973, or, better, he got to power through violence after ousting President Salvador Allende. His reign of terror lasted over 15 years, during which he imposed control and order through violence and persecution. His repression caused the death, the internment or the disappearance of over 100,000 people. In 1988, a referendum on a proposed continuation of his rule resulted in his defeat, ending his political career.

The story of that referendum was the subject of Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s film No, which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Over ten years later, Larraín goes back to covering the bloodiest chapter in the history of his country in El Conde, a new Netflix production.

El Conde (The Count) is the name given to Augusto Pinochet, who is revealed to be still alive, or rather, undead. As a matter of fact, a voiceover with a British accent tells the viewer the story of his life, starting from his early childhood as a royal guard in revolutionary France who decides to flee his home country to relocate in the poor Southern-American country of Chile. The fun fact about Claude Pinoche, later renamed Augusto Pinochet, is that he’s a vampire. He has fed off the blood of ordinary people for centuries, but now, 250 years after his birth, he just feels he’s had enough. He’s tired, he’s not happy about the treatment he’s getting from the country he once ruled, and on top of that, there’s a family fight for his inheritance: his five children, and his beloved wife Lucia, are ready to claim their part of the immense fortune he accumulated in life. In this already turbulent scenario comes Carmen, a nun with more than one ace up her sleeve…

Pablo Larraín is clearly obsessed with history, and with major political or social figures. After tackling Jacqueline Kennedy and Diana Spencer in his two most recent biopics, this time Larraín takes the bull by the horns by covering the singular most infamously influential person in the recent history of Chile. In a way, Augusto Pinochet is Chile’s Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, a ruthless, bloody dictator that shaped a country in many more ways than even the terrifying number of casualties can suggest. Larraín’s approach to such a figure is made even more complicated by the fact that Chile, by Larraín’s own words, hasn’t really coped with that part of its history, leaving Pinochet as a sort of eternal leader. Given the hotly controversial subject, the director chose the way of the satire where Pinochet is a European-born vampire whose family is ready to fight for his inheritance. Shot by Edward Lachman (Carol, I’m Not There, Far From Heaven) in a desolating black-and-white that somehow echoes Dreyer and Bergman, the film’s action and script are actually filled with action and black humour, gory scenes and sudden bursts of extreme violence that make this cinematic experience eventful in unexpected ways. Yes, the film may be accused of spelling its themes too literally or of being too talky for its own good: the implications of Pinochet’s title character are obvious (consider him a modern Dracula), his origins are an open manifest of the film’s thinking (fascism was born in Europe and exported to South America), and the idea of fascism as an undying creature is anything but subtle (yet hardly wrong, all things considered) but the inventive direction chosen by Larraín makes up for the occasional mishaps that the film presents.

Supported by a superb company of actors, that go from the veteran Jaime Vadell to Paula Luchsinger, Gloria Munchmeyer, and Stella Gonet (in a role that is best left unspoiled), El Conde fully deserves the anticipation that accompanies it, as it is a twisted, brilliant and entertaining.

Grade: A-

This movie is from the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Netflix will release El Conde in theaters September 7 and on Netflix on September 15.

Photo: Pablo Larrain / Netflix