The new film by Pablo Larrain, El Conde, deals with Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, in an unexpected manner. The film reveals that Pinochet is a 250-year-old vampire, and you might think he died in 2006, but he is still very much alive, living in a secluded place on the outskirts of Chile. It’s a provocative idea, trying to bring out the satirical humor associated with dictatorships and the familial and political underpinnings surrounding Pinochet himself.
El Conde is filled with violence and gore, all hinting at the bloodshed during Pinochet’s 1973 coup and the human rights violations during his reign. By showing him as a vampire, a creature who feasts on human blood, the metaphor of politicians ‘sucking the soul’ out of people is nicely brought out in the open. Jaime Vadell delivers a striking portrayal of a vampirical spoof of Pinochet with an uncanny resemblance to the actual figure,...
El Conde is filled with violence and gore, all hinting at the bloodshed during Pinochet’s 1973 coup and the human rights violations during his reign. By showing him as a vampire, a creature who feasts on human blood, the metaphor of politicians ‘sucking the soul’ out of people is nicely brought out in the open. Jaime Vadell delivers a striking portrayal of a vampirical spoof of Pinochet with an uncanny resemblance to the actual figure,...
- 9/16/2023
- by Ayush Awasthi
- Film Fugitives
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being reviewed here wouldn't exist.
Traditionally speaking, vampire stories have boasted a unique kind of versatility that most other subgenres can only dream about. In the last decade alone, they've run the gamut of high-water marks like Taika Waititi's mockumentary "What We Do In The Shadows" and Jim Jarmusch's soulful "Only Lovers Left Alive" to epic lows such as "Dracula Untold," "Morbius," and, well, take your pick of literally any of the "Underworld" movies. 2023 alone has seen two "Dracula" adaptations debut with various degrees of success, but the last quarter of the year brings us the most distinct and boundary-pushing vampire flick, by far -- courtesy of one of the most unexpected sources imaginable.
Leave it to filmmaker Pablo Larraín and the evocative black-and-white "El Conde...
Traditionally speaking, vampire stories have boasted a unique kind of versatility that most other subgenres can only dream about. In the last decade alone, they've run the gamut of high-water marks like Taika Waititi's mockumentary "What We Do In The Shadows" and Jim Jarmusch's soulful "Only Lovers Left Alive" to epic lows such as "Dracula Untold," "Morbius," and, well, take your pick of literally any of the "Underworld" movies. 2023 alone has seen two "Dracula" adaptations debut with various degrees of success, but the last quarter of the year brings us the most distinct and boundary-pushing vampire flick, by far -- courtesy of one of the most unexpected sources imaginable.
Leave it to filmmaker Pablo Larraín and the evocative black-and-white "El Conde...
- 9/13/2023
- by Jeremy Mathai
- Slash Film
Pablo Larraín’s primary mode is deconstruction, of everything from genre to myth to ideology. But given its intensely subjective point of view, El Conde shares more in common with Spencer and Jackie than the filmmaker’s earlier investigations into Chile’s tumultuous past, Post Mortem and No. The film seeks to dispense with the historical record and imagine what happens behind closed doors. Of course, there’s one important difference here: El Conde is certainly no stickler for verisimilitude, as the Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) of this film is a morose vampire fasting from blood in order to ease himself into death.
That premise might suggest that Larraín has sympathy for the devil, but El Conde is no hagiography. The film renders Pinochet as an aging, ever-prattling child of sorts, who no longer wants to live in a Chile that has no appreciation for all his “great work,” nor...
That premise might suggest that Larraín has sympathy for the devil, but El Conde is no hagiography. The film renders Pinochet as an aging, ever-prattling child of sorts, who no longer wants to live in a Chile that has no appreciation for all his “great work,” nor...
- 8/31/2023
- by Greg Nussen
- Slant Magazine
The Augusto Pinochet regime, which ruled Chile under an oppressive thumb with unspeakable human rights violations from 1973 to 1990, following the coup d’état that ousted Socialist president Salvador Allende, has been the subject of countless screen dramas. That includes a loose trilogy by Pablo Larraín, comprised of Tony Manero, Post Mortem and No, all of which observed the dictatorship from unique angles. But even by the director’s own distinctive standards, his return to the subject is a wild leap into irreverent originality, reimagining the deposed tyrant as a 250-year-old vampire on the verge of relinquishing eternal life.
Shot in ravishingly textured, crepuscular black and white by the great Ed Lachman, the Netflix film (opening Sept. 8 in theaters before streaming from Sept. 15) is as visually intoxicating and atmospheric as it is provocative, liberally mixing political satire with dark comedy and horror while examining a grim history that seems doomed to keep repeating itself.
Shot in ravishingly textured, crepuscular black and white by the great Ed Lachman, the Netflix film (opening Sept. 8 in theaters before streaming from Sept. 15) is as visually intoxicating and atmospheric as it is provocative, liberally mixing political satire with dark comedy and horror while examining a grim history that seems doomed to keep repeating itself.
- 8/31/2023
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Putting the blackened, flash-frozen heart of Chile’s undead past into a blender, blitzing it to a lumpen pulp and guzzling down the result with grimly comic relish, Pablo Larraín, after his Hollywood forays with “Spencer” and “Jackie,” returns to his home turf and finds it bleeding out from a mysterious two-hole puncture on its neck. “El Conde” — the Chilean director’s uncategorizably bizarre riff on vampire mythos, cronyist corruption and the more mundane horror that is a squabbling family divvying up their patriarchal inheritance while the patriarch is still around — coils itself around an inventively nasty literalization of the idea that the evil that men does lives after them. Those words, spoken over Caesar’s body in “Julius Caesar,” sparked a war that ended a republic. With his iteration, Larraín aims to do his part in delivering a republic instead, bringing his elegantly foul exercise in gallows humor to bear,...
- 8/31/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
If Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín displayed one constant over the course of a stunningly multifarious filmography since his breakout sophomore feature “Tony Manero” (2006), it’s his inquisitiveness pitched at the fault lines of politics and family. He sinks his teeth deep—so deep—into that curiosity in his luminous and pensively funny political satire “El Conde,” a fiercely original genre outing that imagines notorious Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a centuries-old vampire and inventively considers the perpetual, shape-shifting nature of evil that goes unpunished.
A long-dead dictator who’s in fact undead and still poisoning the veins of the nation while his kin pecks at his wealth like voracious vultures? What a perfectly gothic playground for Larraín, one that aptly dwells in the shadows of a nondescript stony mansion and liberally draws blood out of the director’s own greatest hits. Expect the sardonic humor of Larraín’s political period masterwork “No” here,...
A long-dead dictator who’s in fact undead and still poisoning the veins of the nation while his kin pecks at his wealth like voracious vultures? What a perfectly gothic playground for Larraín, one that aptly dwells in the shadows of a nondescript stony mansion and liberally draws blood out of the director’s own greatest hits. Expect the sardonic humor of Larraín’s political period masterwork “No” here,...
- 8/31/2023
- by Tomris Laffly
- The Wrap
Everyone knows that Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died in December 2006 at the age of 91, more than 30 years after he seized power from Salvador Allende in a coup d’état that was followed by censorship, torture, mass internments, and forced disappearances at the pleasure of an unelected regime that drained the country of its lifeblood for generations to come. What Pablo Larraín’s cheeky and grotesque “El Conde” (or “The Count”) presupposes is… what if he didn’t?
Directly addressing a figure whose dark shadow has fringed some of the director’s previous work, this fanged satire about the persistence of evil imagines that Pinochet is still alive and kicking. Or, more accurately: undead and loathing it. In Larraín’s conception, Pinochet is a 250-year-old vampire who first developed his lust for blood during the French Revolution, during which he so fetishized Marie Antoinette’s indifference towards the common man that...
Directly addressing a figure whose dark shadow has fringed some of the director’s previous work, this fanged satire about the persistence of evil imagines that Pinochet is still alive and kicking. Or, more accurately: undead and loathing it. In Larraín’s conception, Pinochet is a 250-year-old vampire who first developed his lust for blood during the French Revolution, during which he so fetishized Marie Antoinette’s indifference towards the common man that...
- 8/31/2023
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
As you may recall, a mysterious Netflix movie titled The Count had been rated “R” earlier this year for “strong violence and gore” and “graphic nudity,” and we now know the project is from director Pablo Larraín (Spencer), officially titled El Conde and coming soon to Netflix.
El Conde will premiere on Netflix on September 15, 2023. Watch the trailer below for a taste of the black & white vampire movie, which looks like a highly unique new take on the genre.
“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...
El Conde will premiere on Netflix on September 15, 2023. Watch the trailer below for a taste of the black & white vampire movie, which looks like a highly unique new take on the genre.
“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...
- 8/10/2023
- by John Squires
- bloody-disgusting.com
Aimee Lou Wood and Matt Dillon have signed on to play Anna and Fyodor Dostoevsky in Małgorzata Szumowska’s ‘The Gambler Wife.’
Written by Szumowska and Kasper Bajon adapted from Andrew D. Kaufman’s book The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky, is a dark comedy about one of literature’s most towering figures.
The project follows Fyodor, or Fyedya to his intimates, and his much younger, pregnant wife, Anna, as they travel to Switzerland for their honeymoon. Anna tolerates Fyedya’s gambling addiction as this will serve as inspiration for his burgeoning literary career. However, Fyedya’s compulsive roulette playing continues to cause problems for the couple until they are forced to return to a Russia that is not quite as they remember.
Also in news – First look image revealed for Sky original film ‘Arthur’s Whisky’
Szumowska describes the feature as...
Written by Szumowska and Kasper Bajon adapted from Andrew D. Kaufman’s book The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky, is a dark comedy about one of literature’s most towering figures.
The project follows Fyodor, or Fyedya to his intimates, and his much younger, pregnant wife, Anna, as they travel to Switzerland for their honeymoon. Anna tolerates Fyedya’s gambling addiction as this will serve as inspiration for his burgeoning literary career. However, Fyedya’s compulsive roulette playing continues to cause problems for the couple until they are forced to return to a Russia that is not quite as they remember.
Also in news – First look image revealed for Sky original film ‘Arthur’s Whisky’
Szumowska describes the feature as...
- 5/18/2023
- by Zehra Phelan
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
BAFTA-winning “Sex Education” star Aimee Lou Wood and Oscar-nominee Matt Dillon (“Crash”) have been tapped to star as Anna and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in “The Gambler Wife,” a dark comedy about one of world literature’s most towering figures, by two-time Berlinale prize winner Małgorzata Szumowska.
“The Gambler Wife” follows the Russian novelist and his much younger, pregnant wife, Anna, as they travel to Switzerland for their honeymoon. Anna tolerates her husband’s gambling addiction, which will serve as inspiration for his burgeoning literary career. However, Fyodor’s compulsive roulette playing continues to cause problems for the couple until they are forced to return to a Russia that is not quite as they remember.
“This dark comedy explores the patriarchal, nationalistic Russian identity which keeps on waging war between the West and the East, which is as relevant today as it was two hundred years ago,” said Szumowska.
Pic is produced...
“The Gambler Wife” follows the Russian novelist and his much younger, pregnant wife, Anna, as they travel to Switzerland for their honeymoon. Anna tolerates her husband’s gambling addiction, which will serve as inspiration for his burgeoning literary career. However, Fyodor’s compulsive roulette playing continues to cause problems for the couple until they are forced to return to a Russia that is not quite as they remember.
“This dark comedy explores the patriarchal, nationalistic Russian identity which keeps on waging war between the West and the East, which is as relevant today as it was two hundred years ago,” said Szumowska.
Pic is produced...
- 5/18/2023
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
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