Illustration by Michael DiMilo
Bloodlines: Review of El Conde
By Geoff Carter
The popularity of the vampire movie, encompassing everything from Dracula to Interview with a Vampire to the Twilight Series to From Dusk Till Dawn to The Lost Boys to Let the Right One In, and on and on and on, has been a staple of the cinema. These movies encompass comedies like Love at First Bite, What We Do in The Shadows, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It, romances like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Twilight Series, the blaxploitation film Blacula, to the remake of Nosferatu and everything else in between. The convolutions are endless.
The particular subgenre’s appeal never seems to die (no pun intended). Since the original Dracula in 1931, variations, remakes, and reimaginings of this particular night stalker have always haunted the silver screen. A viewer might expect that the vampire film had seen (again, no pun intended) every variation under the sun. But then comes Pablo Larrain’s razor-sharp satire El Conde, a brilliantly conceived historical epic spanning centuries and including the protagonist vampire’s numerous incursions into history. It has to—the protagonist of El Conde is none other than Augusto Pinochet, one-time ruthless dictator of Chile.
At the start of the film, we see Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) as an old man living in a broken-down farm, surrounded by artifacts of his past, including models of Nazi soldiers, a portrait of himself as president, and other artifacts of his career pondering his life as classical music plays on the turntable. He is alone.
A woman’s voice-over commences to tell his story, beginning in 18th century France during the Revolution where, after he is discovered as a vampire, he deserts the army, fakes his death, and devotes himself to putting down revolutions in every corner of the globe. He eventually emigrates to Chile, climbs the ranks of the army until he becomes general and overthrows the Allende government.
Pinochet comes under investigation for corruption and human rights abuses after he leaves office. Rather than face the music, he once again fakes his own death and retires to a seaside farm. Bored after two hundred and fifty years on the planet, Pinochet begins losing his will to live. Fyodor (Alfredo Castro), his butler who Pinochet turned into a vampire years ago, borrows Pinochet’s uniform and begins a gruesome rampage in Santiago, literally stealing human hearts.
Pinochet’s children gather at the farm after having surreptitiously hired Carmen (Paula Luchsinger) to exorcise and kill the vampire so they can finally gain their inheritance. She arrives, pretending to be an auditor hired to assess the family accounts but instead starts gathering incriminating material on the family. Pinochet becomes infatuated with Carmen who seems to share the attraction but eventually reveals herself to him as a nun sent to kill him. His power is too much for her and he seduces her; he bites her after they have sex, turning her into a vampire. During a beautiful sequence in which Carmen discovers the power of flight, she careens gracefully through the air, exalting in her freedom.
Pinochet’s mother arrives to put his house in order. She is the mystery narrator, a woman with an impeccable British accent. Unbelievably, and hilariously, it is Margaret Thatcher—Pinochet’s vampire mom—who arrives to save the day. We first see her flying through the clouds dressed in a very Thatcher-like conservative business suit, not unlike one of Marvel’s superheroes. Up to this point, Pinochet had been unaware Thatcher had been his vampire mom, but when she tells the tale of her blood initiation and his birth and surrender to an orphanage, the historical frame takes on an odd but surreal symmetry, not unlike an Escher painting.
Once Thatcher arrives, family squabbles, petty jealousies, and political maneuverings lead to the mother of all bloodbaths. Carmen’s attempted exorcism, Fyodor’s betrayals, Pinochet’s wife Lucia’s (Gloria Munchmeyer) infidelities, and his children’s wallowing greed erupt into an uncontrolled mayhem.
El Conde is in turns harrowing and hilarious. Extreme violence alternates with Pinochet’s everyday, even mundane routines of daily life. After rampaging through Santiago harvesting human hearts, we see our protagonist grinding them up in a blender into sort of a gory smoothie. When the children come to visit—not out of love, but to investigate where their father’s purloined treasure lies, their squabbling and false fealty to their dad smacks of melodrama.
As Carmen, Paula Luchsinger is absolutely brilliant. Displaying a passion comprised of equal parts religious fervor and investigative zeal, her presence lights up the screen with intensity and enthusiasm, particularly when conducting her investigation. Her portrayal of Carmen’s zealotry tiptoes a narrow line between the sublime and the ridiculous, from her emotionally wrought prayers to her relentless interrogations, she is an unrelenting engine of the church—very much like Joan of Arc.
Vadell’s Pinochet is a complexity of bewilderment, apathy, and corruption. He is also a collector. As he and Carmen are getting close, he reveals to her his collection of ancient French artifacts, including Marie Antoinette’s head. The secret elevator leading to his basement lair not only holds his collection of frozen hearts, but also his collection of priceless books accumulated across the ages.
Even after Carmen reawakens his desire to live, Pinochet seems more of a bumbler than a ruthless dictator—but perhaps that is the point. Larrain’s depiction of Pinochet and Thatcher as parasitical vampires literally feeding on the hearts of the people is an apt—though perhaps slightly heavy-handed—analogy to the insatiably power-hungry among us. Vampires, and world leaders, live forever, either literally or in the annals of history books. Or, as in El Conde, both. At the beginning of the film, Pinochet is tired and ready to give up. As an old man, he is weak but still wily, but continues to live in the past.
El Conde is a beautiful film, shot in gloriously glowing black and white. The scenes where the vampire is flying over the city or through the cloudy seascapes of the family farm are absolutely breathtaking. When the camera goes into the basement, the dimly lit hallway evokes memories of the first James Whale Frankenstein films. And, as the comic elements of the film are keenly balanced against its foundation of political and historical realities, this beauty is balanced against the extreme violence and moral vacancy of its characters.
El Conde is more than a vampire movie, although it does fulfill the expectations of that genre. It is a biting and razor-sharp satire about those who operate the levers of power in this world. While not all leaders are Pinochets or Thatchers or Hitlers, the lust for power is not unlike—and in many cases confluent—with the lust for blood.
This film is also hilarious, beautiful, and finally—at the conclusion and in the worst possible way—harrowing.