May: Reygadas x Larraín
May: Reygadas x Larraín, FLMTQ Releases 186-189
During the month of May Filmatique presents Reygadas x Larraín, a showcase of early works from two Latin American masters—Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas and Chilean social satirist Pablo Larraín.
In his second and third films, Pablo Larraín allegorizes the low-grade terror of existence under Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship. Cultural oblivion is embodied by Tony Manero's obsessive protagonist, a man singularly fixated on replicating John Travolta's performance in Saturday Night Fever, while Post Mortem chronicles a detached mortuary worker's unraveling as, beyond the walls, the nation careens toward bloodshed, disappearance, denial. Carlos Reygadas's controversial Battle in Heaven links the well-to-do daughter of a Mexican general with her middle-aged chauffeur through a web of sex and secrets, agitating against prejudices embedded in Mexico's racial and class divides. Silent Light similarly orbits issues of forbidden desire and redemption—inside a rural Mennonite community, a local patriarch's affair with his neighbor sows tragic consequences.
While employing disparate narrative and aesthetic methods, the works of Reygadas and Larraín are ultimately concerned with issues of political and structural violence in their respective countries, and the process of registering these realities onscreen. The 1973 CIA-backed Chilean coup d'état—which overthrew the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende, thereby ending civilian rule—serves as the point of gravity of both Tony Manero and Post Mortem; here, Larraín diagnoses societal sickness through the precise dismantling of cultural, political, and corporeal maladies. Likewise, Reygadas surveys injustice in contemporary Mexico along axes of social and spiritual redemption—his characters serve as proxies for an increasingly stratified, if not forsaken, country.
Since these films, Reygadas and Larraín have gone on to establish celebrated bodies of work—Larraín's Ema, a lambent Valparaíso-set portrait of a female reggaeton dancer, is being released this month, whereas Reygadas's Nuestro Tiempo (Our Time) was released last summer after premiering at Venice, San Sebastián, São Paulo and Havana. At a time of increased and necessary engagement with Latin American cinema, Filmatique's Reygadas x Larraín series spotlights two of the region's most prominent filmmakers, offering a point of entry into their oeuvres.
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Tony Manero, Pablo Larraín (2008)
Tony Manero, Pablo Larraín / Chile-Brazil, 2008
Raúl Peralta is obsessed with Tony Manero. He performs at a bar on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile, meticulously recreating scenes from Saturday Night Fever. Raúl watches and rewatches the film at a local cinema he attends religiously, often in the middle of the day, as armored vehicles and soldiers patrol the streets. Meanwhile Raúl's dreams of becoming a star appear reasonably attainable when the national television channel announces a Tony Manero impersonating contest. His conviction to do whatever it takes, however, soon launches Raúl on an irreversible path of violence.
Immersing the spectator in the deepest recesses of a determined mind while evoking an era's pervasive threat of violence, Tony Manero posits a murderous psychopath as the logical conclusion of an authoritarian state. Pablo Larraín's second film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival's Quinzaine des Réalisateurs; Havana and BAFICI, where it won Best Actor; Torino, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize; Warsaw, where it won a Special Jury Prize; and Istanbul, where it won Best Film. Tony Manero is a New York Times Critics' Pick.
Post Mortem, Pablo Larraín (2010)
Post Mortem, Pablo Larraín / Chile-Mexico, 2010
Chile, 1973. Mario is a civil servant at the state morgue, where he transcribes notes dictated by the coroner. He mostly keeps to himself, until he meets Nancy, a neighbor who dances at a local club but is perhaps getting too old for the trade. A brief tryst draws them together, but before long Nancy's activist friends are being ferreted out by the authorities, and Mario's morgue is piling up with leftist dissidents. Government officials override autopsy reports to submit politically expedient causes of death into the official record—as Mario stands by, watching, he embarks on a slow but assured spiral into madness.
Marbled in black humor and with sustained attention to the subtle forms of violence—psychological, political, corporeal—of a military coup that remains largely offscreen, Post Mortem allegorizes through one man's eyes a nation's path from complacency, to complicity, to ruin. Pablo Larraín's third feature premiered at the Venice Film Festival, IFFR - Rotterdam International Film Festival, San Sebastián, and Cartagena, where it won Best Film.
Battle in Heaven, Carlos Reygadas (2005)
Battle in Heaven, Carlos Reygadas / Mexico-France-Belgium-Germany, 2005
Ana is a member of the elite, her father a Mexican general. Privileged, wealthy, and bored, she forms a connection with Marcos, the family chauffeur—he is the only member of her household who knows about her double life working as a high-end prostitute. This clandestine knowledge, and escalating anxiety in his own household, leads Marcos to confide in Ana a secret of his own: an infant child that he and his wife kidnapped for ransom has died in their custody. Ana pleads with him to turn himself in, but Marcos decides to seek redemption elsewhere.
Offering an intersectional view of race, class, and gender in Mexico City, Battle in Heaven is a provocative statement on structural forms of violence and their ripple effects. Carlos Reygadas's second film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Rotterdam, Karlovy Vary, and Rio de Janeiro, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize.
Silent Light, Carlos Reygadas (2007)