El Conde - MOVIE REVIEW / CHILEAN BLACK COMEDY HORROR FILM.

 

 

El Conde is a 2023 Chilean black comedy horror film directed by Pablo Larraín and co-written with Guillermo Calderón. This dark satire reimagines Augusto Pinochet, Chile's infamous dictator, as a 250-year-old vampire grappling with his desire for death. Featuring Jaime Vadell, Gloria Münchmeyer, Alfredo Castro, and Paula Luchsinger, the film combines historical critique with supernatural elements to deliver a biting commentary on authoritarianism, greed, and legacy.

 

The movie premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2023, where it won the award for Best Screenplay. It became available on Netflix on September 15, 2023, just days after the 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup d’état that brought Pinochet to power. Acclaimed for its visual storytelling, El Conde earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography.

 

The story begins in the 18th century with Claude Pinoche, a French royalist soldier who is discovered to be a vampire. After surviving an attempted execution, he witnesses the French Revolution, including the fall of Marie Antoinette. Feigning his death, he flees France and spends the next two centuries participating in the suppression of revolutionary movements. By 1935, he arrives in Chile, assumes the name Augusto Pinochet, and enlists in the Chilean army. Decades later, he leads a coup against Salvador Allende’s socialist government in 1973, establishing himself as dictator. Adopting the moniker "The Count," Pinochet demands reverence from his family while amassing immense wealth through corruption and violence.

 

When investigations into his crimes and ill-gotten riches threaten his empire after he steps down from power, Pinochet fakes his death once more and retreats to a secluded farm. After 250 years of existence, he begins to lose his will to live, much to the concern of his wife, Lucía, and his loyal butler Fyodor, a White Russian turned into a vampire by Pinochet himself. Fyodor, embodying Pinochet’s militaristic brutality, dons the dictator’s uniform and embarks on a grisly killing spree in Santiago, consuming human hearts to sustain his dark vitality.

 

The Pinochet children, eager to claim their inheritance and suspicious of their father’s actions, hire a nun named Carmen to assess their family’s finances. However, Carmen’s true mission is far more profound: she is tasked with exorcising Augusto. Fluent in French and charming, she gains the dictator’s trust and begins to uncover the depths of the Pinochet family’s corruption. Meanwhile, Augusto grows weary of his wife’s infidelity with Fyodor but tolerates the affair as part of his detachment from worldly concerns.

 

Carmen’s relationship with Augusto takes an unexpected turn when she reveals her identity as a nun and attempts to exorcise him. Instead of succeeding, she succumbs to his supernatural presence and engages in a transformative sexual encounter that turns her into a vampire. This development prompts the arrival of none other than Margaret Thatcher, revealed to be Augusto’s estranged mother. A victim of a vampire attack herself, Thatcher had abandoned Augusto at birth. Now, as an immortal matriarch, she seeks to assert dominance over her son’s newfound connection with Carmen.

 

Thatcher commands Augusto to kill Carmen, but instead, Augusto shows her the vast wealth he has accumulated. Carmen, however, confesses her ultimate betrayal: her seduction and transformation into a vampire were part of her mission for the Roman Catholic Church to infiltrate the Pinochet family and expose their crimes. Before she can act further, Fyodor captures and guillotines her, destroying the evidence she had collected.

 

Tensions boil over as Fyodor, Lucía, and the Pinochet children plot to eliminate Augusto and Thatcher to seize their inheritance. In a climactic showdown, Augusto drives a stake through Lucía’s heart and decapitates Fyodor, leaving his children to salvage the remnants of the family’s fractured empire.

 

As the film concludes, nuns arrive to oversee the now-abandoned property, while Augusto and Thatcher, rejuvenated by feeding on vampire hearts, embark on a new life. Reborn as a child, Augusto chooses to remain in Chile, ominously stating that leftist opponents will always rise, ensuring his eternal battle against them.

 

El Conde is a masterful blend of political satire and gothic horror, exploring themes of power, corruption, and immortality. By reimagining one of history’s most polarizing figures as a vampire, Larraín crafts a scathing allegory of tyranny’s enduring legacy, challenging audiences to confront the specter of authoritarianism that continues to haunt societies worldwide.