I've joked before that Count Dracula hasn't had the best year (see my reviews of Renfield and The Last Voyage of the Demeter). Well, here is Pablo Larrain's El Conde (or The Count), which is a pretty good film about a vampire who is, I guess, also a count.
As exciting as cinema continues to be (in spite of the SAG-AFTRA strike inspiring studios to Do The Wrong Thing and delay a number of releases), with much hype around the upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon as well as plenty of festival buzz around the likes of Lanthimos, Fincher, Triet, Miyazaki, et al., El Conde sticks out as being done pretty dirty.
Here is a film by a highly gifted filmmaker (2021's Spencer, 2016's Jackie, 2012's No) that was praised at Venice Film Festival, only to then get thrown into the Netflix sea with little notice. That makes it easier for more people to see it, of course, but it's bound to get drowned in the content glut.
Besides, even if we pretend for a moment that people really did get inspired to watch more "foreign" (non-Hollywood) films during the COVID-induced content drought, I don't know if very many people will be enticed by the premise. When the synopsis asks "What if Pinochet was really a centuries-old vampire? Wouldn't that be funny?", I reckon most would respond "Pino-who?" (To some, Pinochet's coup-d'etat, presidency, and death will seem like basic-b*tch knowledge, but keep in mind, the Netflix audience consists of the people who don't know where *insert literally anything here* is located on a map.)
Even if you know your history, I'd be lying if I said the film is consistently all that funny. I'm also a bit bemused by the decision to have a narrator who speaks English while the rest of the movie is in Spanish, even if, when we finally got to see who the Englishwoman in question actually was, I chuckled.
Regardless, the film is entertaining and its production design and cinematography are both seminal, achieving a look that's worthy of the vampire classics of old -- and also The Passion of Joan of Arc at certain moments. Still, I'm thinking I'll get my true fix with Eggers' Nosferatu remake.
As exciting as cinema continues to be (in spite of the SAG-AFTRA strike inspiring studios to Do The Wrong Thing and delay a number of releases), with much hype around the upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon as well as plenty of festival buzz around the likes of Lanthimos, Fincher, Triet, Miyazaki, et al., El Conde sticks out as being done pretty dirty.
Here is a film by a highly gifted filmmaker (2021's Spencer, 2016's Jackie, 2012's No) that was praised at Venice Film Festival, only to then get thrown into the Netflix sea with little notice. That makes it easier for more people to see it, of course, but it's bound to get drowned in the content glut.
Besides, even if we pretend for a moment that people really did get inspired to watch more "foreign" (non-Hollywood) films during the COVID-induced content drought, I don't know if very many people will be enticed by the premise. When the synopsis asks "What if Pinochet was really a centuries-old vampire? Wouldn't that be funny?", I reckon most would respond "Pino-who?" (To some, Pinochet's coup-d'etat, presidency, and death will seem like basic-b*tch knowledge, but keep in mind, the Netflix audience consists of the people who don't know where *insert literally anything here* is located on a map.)
Even if you know your history, I'd be lying if I said the film is consistently all that funny. I'm also a bit bemused by the decision to have a narrator who speaks English while the rest of the movie is in Spanish, even if, when we finally got to see who the Englishwoman in question actually was, I chuckled.
Regardless, the film is entertaining and its production design and cinematography are both seminal, achieving a look that's worthy of the vampire classics of old -- and also The Passion of Joan of Arc at certain moments. Still, I'm thinking I'll get my true fix with Eggers' Nosferatu remake.