In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende's presidency, an employee at a Morgue's recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.
Larrain’s powerful sophomore feature is a slow and dark journey into the heart of darkness.
Shot on grainy 16mm in a slurry of beiges, browns and greys, it’s an expertly controlled work.
A sometimes shocking, often moving journey through a blood-stained corner of the past. Like Costa Gavras's Missing through the eyes of an everyday Chilean.
It's slow but chilling and memorable.
A thoughtful and unique film that manages to linger in the mind.
The personal becomes the political, and the historical, in this queasily imagined nightmare.
Larrain’s particular style has fervent devotees, but it can be a little too airless and pre-determined for its own good.
Complex and rewarding.
It's by no means an easy watch, but it's a rewarding and disturbing one.
The film is intensely shocking, but in a very subtle way: you come out feeling you've been swimming in someone's else nightmare, then remind yourself that the nightmare really happened, and not so long ago.
It's a bleak film that becomes positively numbing in its relentless pursuit of that perennial theme, the banality of evil.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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