"El Conde" review — The fangs of fascism dig deep
“You can call a soldier a killer, but not a thief.”
On September 11, 1973, Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte led a military coup d’état against the democratically-elected government of Chile. Supported by the United States through “Operation Condor,” a 20-year CIA campaign to destabilize left-wing governments in South America, Pinochet began a brutal seventeen-year fascist rule in Chile. His government was responsible for widespread internments, open political persecution, thousands of executions, many more disappearances, and the use of chemical and biological weapons against his enemies. In 1990, he stepped down as president of Chile but remained the military’s Commander-in-Chief. In 1998, Pinochet was arrested in London on human rights criminal charges. He was later extradited to Chile where he was formally charged with numerous criminal charges, including assassinations, executions, running secret military death squads, use of biochemical weapons, as well as embezzlement and tax evasion, just to name a few. On December 10, 2006, Pinochet died from a heart failure.
El Conde, however, proposes the question, “But what if Pinochet didn’t actually die?” Instead, the film proposes that Pinochet is, in fact, a 250-year-old vampire who’s been all over the world fighting against revolutions and leaving a trail of blood and ruin in his wake. This Pinochet was born “Augusto Pinoche” in 18th-century France. After a troubled childhood, he worked his way into the French army where he developed his anti-revolutionary ideals and discovered his vampiric nature. He developed a ferocious love for King Louis XIV and Queen Marie Antoinette and, following their deaths, he vowed to destroy revolutions the world over. In the mid-20th century, Pinochet finds himself in Chile, where he slowly worked through the ranks of the military until he becomes the ferocious soldier he’s most known to be. In 2006, Pinochet faked his death. In the present day, seventeen years later, he lives in a run-down house in rural Chile with his wife and children, eating frozen hearts, and wasting his eternal years away.
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| Jaime Vadell and Gloria Münchmeyer in El Conde. Phot via Netflix. |
El Conde (Spanish for “The Count”) is the latest film from Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín, best known in the English-speaking world for his biopics Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021). It premiered a little over two weeks ago at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for best screenplay, and has now found a home on Netflix. Larraín plays lightly with his home nation’s tumultuous history here, as the premise suggests, to craft a satire that is very funny and very biting. Shot in gorgeous black-and-white, with some great performances, and clever mise-en-scène, El Conde takes the internalized perspective of Spencer but adds elements of horror and fantasy to the mix. The film is appropriately macabre and disgusting. Here, blood runs black, full of hatred and old secrets. While not everything in the film works as well as it should — the narrative drags a bit too much in the second act — the result is a memorable, well-crafted film about one of the most horrible figures of the Cold War era.
The film starts with a recap of Pinochet’s life before coming to Chile with a few sequences in a beautifully recreated 18th-century Paris. Our unseen narrator pushes us through the highlights of his life, including witnessing the death of Marie Antoinette and his political career in Chile. Despite the majority of the dialogue being in Spanish, the film is narrated in English (with voiceover by Stella Gonet), which leads to a major plot twist later on. But most of the movie is concerned with present-day Pinochet and the infighting that dominates his family. In his old age, Pinochet (played by Jaime Vadell) is living a horrible, purposeless life. Instead of being able to hunt like he used to, Pinochet is stuck only being able to eat human hearts kept in a freezer, then made drinkable in a blender. His mouth hungers for the feeling of fresh blood once again. One night, at dinner with his family, Pinochet declares his intention to die that evening, a desire which takes his entire family to sing his praises to overcome. Pinochet might be old, but he is a narcissist and proud. Jaime Vadell brings humour and terror to the monstrous dictator. His performance blends the senility of old age with the character’s ceaseless hunger for death, creating a fascinating characterization of a vampire.
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| Paula Luchsinger in El Conde. Photo via Netflix. |
The other players in the story are Pinochet’s wife (played by Gloria Münchmeyer), their five children, the butler (played by Alfredo Castro), and a nun masquerading as an accountant with a mission to kill the vampire (played by Paula Luchsinger). Münchmeyer is delightful as Pinochet’s neglected wife, who remains committed to her husband despite his seeming indifference towards her. She’s just as ruthless as Pinochet, maintaining tight control over her family, but she ultimately feels betrayed by him as he won’t turn her into a vampire. The butler, Fyodor, remains Pinochet’s last servant and a vampire himself. Fyodor remains loyal to Pinochet, although he runs his own schemes behind the scenes, making secret allegiances within the family and taking on hidden errands. The nun, Carmencita, has her own motives and agendas as she carefully sows seeds of destruction within the dictator’s family. Pinochet’s children get some strong comedic bits into the film, although they are certainly the most underdeveloped characters.
The sense of listlessness that Pinochet experiences for the majority of the film’s story unfortunately projects a bit too much on the film itself. It’s a film that’s heavy on the (excellent) premise, but unfortunately light on strong narrative beats. The film plays through enjoyable scenes of the family squabbling, Pinochet languishing, and Carmencita, the nun, plotting to take down the vampire. But these beats become quickly overplayed, relying too much on imagery that becomes familiar as opposed to creating new drama. Pinochet’s children are woefully underutilized as well, feeling more like stray pieces as opposed to developed characters. There are some enjoyable moments of gore, including some scenes of the vampires hunting in the city of Santiago and homemade blood smoothies, but they feel a little too underutilized. That is, of course, until the third act, which I will not give away here because the surprise makes it so much more enjoyable. The ending brings some much-needed kick to the narrative, but the film is a little too slow to get there.
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| Pinochet's children in El Conde. Photo via Netflix. |
El Conde, however, looks excellent thanks to some wonderful sets designed by Oscar Ríos Quiroz and rich and textured black-and-white cinematography by Edward Lachman. Lachman’s cinematography is gorgeous with some strong contrasting tones and harsh lighting. The framing is creative and unique, with great attention paid to intriguing lighting setups bolstered by some sweeping vistas of the Chilean countryside. Lachman captures the film’s gore with a sense of indifference, the same indifference that Pinochet and the film’s other characters perceive the carnage. The production design isn’t so obvious, but its details are stunning. It incorporates strange details like broken rafters and dirt floors to create the feeling of decay and rot creatively and stylishly. There’s a great deal of detail in the rotting house of the Pinochet clan, a hollow tribute to a family once loaded with wealth.
El Conde is a grotesque, bloody affair. Funny and dark, the film is a striking portrait of a failing dictator at the end of his long life. While it lacks some narrative punch, El Conde hits some great highlights throughout. It attempts to break into the heart of evil, focusing on the existential hollowness that a life of cruelty leaves behind. Here, Larraín depicts Pinochet as a vampire to wrestle with his legacy and the horrific effects he had on Chile. In life, not every villain can be reduced to a monster. Instead, the endless thirst for blood comes from within the human soul. That’s a thought more terrifying than any creature of the night.
El Conde is now streaming on Netflix.
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