The highly anticipated dark comedy horror by the Chilean auteur will premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, before going into theaters on Sept. 7th and finally streaming on the site from September 15th.
There is one thing missing in Pablo Larrain’s latest work, El Conde, tho…
The film looks amazing, shot in a crisp black and white on location in Santiago, Chile and tackles an important figure in world history, the general turned dictator Augusto Pinochet, but with a twist and humor to boot. In El Conde, the Spencer and Jackie filmmaker who is slated to be making a film about Maria Callas starring Angelina Jolie as Maria, reimagines Pinochet as a 250-year old vampire.
But the film, which Larrain has co-written with Guillermo Calderón with whom he worked on both Neruda and Ema, does not feature another longterm collaborator of the filmmaker, his fellow Chilean, editor Sebastian Sepulveda. It’s a shame, as editing is an art best appreciated when it goes unnoticed and Sepulveda is the grand master of that. But all you have to do is watch the Camelot scene from Jackie to know what I mean. Search for it on YouTube, it’s goosebumps material.
The Netflix official synopsis of Larrain’s latest goes like this:
“El Conde is a dark comedy/horror that imagines a parallel universe inspired by the recent history of Chile. The film portrays Augusto Pinochet, a symbol of world fascism, as a vampire who lives hidden in a ruined mansion in the cold southern tip of the continent. Feeding his appetite for evil to sustain his existence. After two hundred and fifty years of life, Pinochet has decided to stop drinking blood and abandon the privilege of eternal life. He can no longer bear that the world remembers him as a thief.
Despite the disappointing and opportunistic nature of his family, he finds new inspiration to continue living a life of vital and counterrevolutionary passion through an unexpected relationship.”
El Conde stars Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zegers and Paula Luchsinger. It is executive produced by Cristian Donoso and Sergio Karmy for Fabula along with Juan de Dios Larrain. The cinematography is by Edward Lachman, with editing by Sofía Subercaseaux, who also edited the 2016 Saudi popular hit Barakah Meets Barakah and has some very big shoes to fill, IMHO.
Check out all the photos from the film on my Instagram account and follow to get an Insta review of the film, coming soon.
And for more info and to save it on your Netflix queue, check out the film’s page.
All images courtesy of Netflix, used with permission.