Pablo Larrain / Netflix
Pablo Larraín is best known stateside for his biopics about famous 20th-century women: Jackie, Spencer, and the forthcoming Maria starring Angelina Jolie as acclaimed opera singer Maria Callas. Nonetheless, his finest works are those that grapple with tumultuous life in his native Chile under the dictatorial rule of Augusto Pinochet: Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010) and No (2012). As also demonstrated by 2015’s The Club, Larraín seems most assured when tackling the corrosive effects of personal and national traumas, and it’s that subject which he again revisits in El Conde (“The Count”)—this time, with a satiric streak that’s as bleak as its monster.
Co-written with The Club and Neruda screenwriter Guillermo Calderón, El Conde (premiering at the Venice International Film Festival before debuting on Netflix on September 15) is a black-and-white genre hybrid that imagines an alternate reality in which Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) is not only a figurative embodiment of evil, but a literal one as well. That’s because in its story’s universe, the Chilean dictator—who passed away in 1990—is a 250-year-old vampire residing on the outskirts of Santiago.
Yet if he’s still alive (or, at least, undead), he now longs for the permanent grave due to his country turning its back on him, after four decades of rule, for his crimes and corruption. Residing with his wife Lucía (Gloria Münchmeyer) and his servant Fyodor (Alfredo Castro), he’s a husk of his former self, reduced to sitting around his barren house and attendant ranch facilities, despondent over his current state and the fact that he doesn’t have the will to bring it to an enduring end.