Stimulating cinema: Tony Manero

Year released: 2008
Director: Pablo Larrain

This Chilean comedy is so black that you can't even see it--but the review posted below by Xan Brooks of the Guardian hits the nail right on the head. You do feel someone uneasy when watching it, but upon reflection--and provided you stick with it--there is a lot to be gained from this engrossing look at the lengths to which one will go in the name of an unhealthy obsession. And the cinematography--all grey grime, filthy apartments and rusting salvage yards--is depressingly beautiful to behold. And Alfredo Castro, in the (sort of) title role, does a tremendous job in a role that features practically no dialogue. Looking forward to checking out Larrain's "Post Mortem," which was the featured review in the October issue of "Sight and Sound."

How many actual laughs are there in "Tony Manero," a Chilean black comedy about one man's obsession with "Saturday Night Fever?" Probably not that many--unless one counts the scene in which our hero defecates on the pristine white suit of a rival, or the one in which he becomes so enraged by a screening of Grease that he opts to break into the booth and club the projectionist to death. And yet a comedy this is-- and one that perversely becomes more hilarious in hindsight, when the initial horror has had time to subside. Watching Tony Manero is like being accosted by a disturbed loner on a late-night bus. Assuming we survive, we may one day find it funny. Alfredo Castro plays Raul, a 52-year-old nobody who models himself on John Travolta's disco idol, ineptly mouthing movie dialogue and essaying dance moves with a frowning, joyless concentration. Chances are that you could put a jacket on a dog and teach it to walk on its hind legs and it would make a more convincing Manero. But no matter, because Raul's monomania is enough to draw a gaggle of adoring disciples. His harassed lover dotes on him, as does her nubile daughter and the elderly owner of the local ballroom. All of them want Raul, but Raul just wants to dance. Specifically, he wants to dance, as Tony Manero, in a TV talent contest. First prize is a blender, second prize is a poncho. And "no political talk" please, for this is 1978, the darkest days of the Pinochet regime, when loose talk can get you shot.

"Tony Manero," the second film from writer-director Pablo Larrain, makes for a brilliantly clammy and unnerving piece of work. The action unfolds in a shiver of handheld camerawork and grainy, overcast colours. There is sex and larceny and random acts of violence. Some scenes literally lose their focus as the fog of madness blows in from the wings. You might file this as an acid satire of 1970s Chile, a time when imported escapism served to distract the masses from the real business of political oppression.

Alternatively, it can be viewed as a broadside against globalisation as a whole, spotlighting a sub-continent hopelesly hard-wired to US culture and stumbling blindly in search of an identity. This point is driven home in a brief but telling exchange between Raul and his girlfriend. "Manero is an American," she tells him gently. "You're not. You belong here."

Except that Raul, true to form, has no desire to ponder this statement. He's too busy killing people, too intent on rehearsing his routine or fashioning a makeshift glitterball from shards of broken glass. So off he goes, this shambling bulk of articulated body parts and crudely firing synapses, slouching towards the TV studio to be born.

What a terrific performance Castro gives us here: funny, scary and pathetic by turns. When Raul Peralta finally slithers on stage, it's a wonder the audience doesn't run for the exit. Perhaps they recognise one of their own. A round of applause for Dr Frankenstein's movie star; the sharp-suited mascot of a zombie nation. Wind him up and watch him dance.

Stimulating cinema: The Maid

Original title: "La Nana"
Year released: 2009
Director: Sebastian Silva

Well-acted and engrossing little film that examines the gulf between the haves and have-nots in modern day Santiago. Catalina Saavedra is wonderful in the title role and the remainder of the cast is spot-on as well. The review is from Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian and was originally published to coincide with the film's UK release in August of 2010.

Sebastián Silva's film is an unexpected combination: a gripping psychological thriller and also a poignant human drama. It really is edge-of-the-seat stuff, with a startling denouement, and an outstanding central performance from Catalina Saavedra. She plays Raquel, the live-in uniformed maid, working for a well-to-do family in Santiago, Chile, in a handsome house with a pool, attending to the needs of the master and mistress along with their lively teenage children. She must also show respect to the children's very haughty and patrician grandmother, who comes to visit and does not hesitate to give her views on how the household should be run.

Raquel is treated as one of the family--that is, like a tiresome, but affectionately regarded cousin or poor relation--and the film opens with an uneasy and embarrassing birthday celebration that the children's mother Pilar (Claudia Celedón) insists on organising for her. Poor Raquel is now 41, with no man or children of her own, and at an age at which she might be wondering if she has wasted her life in the service of people who don't care about her. Silva cranks up the tension as the atmosphere becomes more oppressive and dysfunctional. Raquel becomes more needy and resentful, more bad-tempered, affecting selective deafness when she does not want to hear an instruction. She has headaches and fainting spells, and when her employers timidly suggest a secondary maid to help her with the chores, Raquel begins a sociopathic guerrilla war against the unfortunate new arrival and against the family itself.

The maid, in her uniform, is traditionally an ambiguous figure: a key player in her own secret theatre of power. She is intimate with authority, but emphatically beneath it, yet also conversely capable, in her very silent submission, of accumulating unspoken grievances with years of service and so increasingly menacing her employer with suggestions of some imminent uprising or unthinkable transgression. Silva's movie draws on the dark, erotic language of Buñuel, Genet and Losey, and it has something of Hollywood thrillers such as "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" and "Fatal Attraction," together with Michael Haneke's icily parodic slant on this genre. But there is another strand to The Maid: a gentler, unalienated strand that invites the audience to recognise the servant's vulnerability, and here "The Maid" reminded me of Fernando Meirelles' "Domésticas" (2001) and Enrique Rivero's "Parque Vía" (2008).

Saavedra's portrayal is scary yet subtle, nuanced, and she appears almost to change physically with shifts in her character's mood. We can see the old woman that she is growing into, together with the shy girlish figure who first entered the family's service. It is a great star performance, reason enough on its own for seeing this.