Edging to the annual awards season, this year a sure thing is that Chilean director Pablo Larrín will on everybody's radar with his one-two punch NERUDA (Chile's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film) and the formidable JACKIE, a biopic about Jacqueline Kennedy, may win its star Natalie Portman a second Oscar statue as a major player. So here comes a warm-up to get acquainted with Larrín's previous work, TONY MANERO is his second feature, a sombre take on Chile's darkest time under the Pinochet regime peppered by a less sombre through-line: the 52-year-old protagonist Raúl Peralta's (Castro, Larrín's regular, an Al Pacino doppelgänger both in appearance and affective intensity, also the co-writer of the script) obdurate participation of a TV program "One O'Clock Festival", where a Tony Manero (the lead character in John Badham's Saturday NIGHT FEVER 1977, played by John Travolta) impersonation competition is scheduled in Santiago, 1978. Examined closely by a hand-held Super 16mm, which intermittently toys with a blurry focus to accentuate the proximity of a sordid milieu, Raúl gives us the first impression of a pallid, taciturn, hangdog loner in the opening scenes where he mistakes the registration date as the actual contest, which will be held one week later. But that facet loses its disguise quickly, when he schematically assaults an old woman who has just been mugged on the street, at her own home, to take away her small boxy color TV set. He is not so much a petty criminal as a ruthless homicide, which ingeniously puts audience at the edge of the seat with a dreadful perturbation whenever he prowls or idles in the dilapidated environs, as violence could be erupted any moment if he sees the opportunity for a monetary gain, whoever the prey is. Raúl lives with a coterie of amateur dancers in the scruffy house of Wilma (Poblete), where they also occasionally perform to entertain customers. His troupe includes Cony (Noguera), his friend- with-benefit, her adolescent daughter Pauli (Lattus) and Pauli's boyfriend Goyo (Morales). Together they help Raúl to rehearse the John Travola routine, but there is seething tension underneath, Raúl becomes impotent during an overtly explicit rumpy-pumpy, and is mocked by Cony that the only thing can revitalize him is the urge to win the competition, which sours their relationship, Goyo is involved with some surreptitious anti-Pinochet movement, which will put everyone under the interrogation of Pinochet's plainclothes secret police, although Raúl manages to skulk out since it is his big day. Larrín's tack doesn't shy away from being obstinately provocative, up to an instance of sickeningly scatological malevolence, which seems like an unwarranted feeler to validate its sky's-the-limit artsy taste. But on the other hand, Larrín and his co-writers perspicuously cast a phenomenon of American culture invasion as an escapism for the amoral and the hard-up living under the terror of an autocracy, which indisputably hits the mark of liberating its restrained but astringent political manifesto. Alfredo Castro is absolutely electrifying to watch from A to Z in the central role, holding Raúl's interior thoughts at bay, but excellently transforms himself onto the screen as a ravishingly volatile monster, with no fear, no conscience, no hold-up can stop his destructive/self-destructive wantonness (as the inauspicious ending dauntingly beckons), who should be answer for this type of societal mutator? The culprit is clear as day in this slam-bang critique of a bygone era weighing heavily on Larrín's fatherland.

Hollywood at its best has very occasionally made films of this subtlety and power, so have the French. The reviews here have picked up on some of the symbolism, but not enough: Raul *is* Chile, yes, but Travolta and Saturday Night Fever also symbolise the trashier American values for which Pinochet's Chile murdered democracy in 1973. The symbolism in this film is staring you in the face, and yet at the same time it is not annoying or even obvious! In the tradition of such films of subtlety, the actual physical presence of the regime is very marginal, barely hinted at with one scene with a couple of brutal plain-clothes cops. And in fact the film, oddly, does work perfectly well as a story of an obsessive, murderous maniac. The lead actor has a compelling screen presence, far superior and more convincing, to my way of thinking, than the mannered nonsense of an Al Pacino, for example. Another powerful offering from recent South American cinema, which like so many of these recent films, works on the slow-burn principle, and does it with great artistry.

Well he might be trying to look like 70s John Travolta (he doesn't!) but he does look just like Al Pacino circa Heat! This film did keep me watching, Ill give it that. But its ultimately disappointing - especially the end where it seems they run out of money/ideas/script! I think there is a very good film trying to get out here - maybe if it had been more about the actual times (Pinochet etc) rather than one man's fixation on Saturday Night Fever, it could have been better? I didn't understand why being obsessed by Saturday Night Fever turns you into a killer and a freak either...its not that bad!There were some rather nasty undercurrent themes in this too - its most definitely an 18. To sum up - its interesting but not worthy of a re-watch. I think it could have been a lot better had the script been different. I didn't understand the need for all the unsavoury bits (not just the two? murders) - just not needed and difficult to watch.

A chilling study in obsession and violence, set against the backdrop of Pinochet's totalitarian Chile in the late '70's. Raul (Alfredo Castro) is a pathological serial killer and amoral petty thief who is obsessed with John Travolta's character from the movie Saturday Night Fever. He watches the film daily and mouths the dialogue, and even tries to copy his mannerisms. As an homage to the film he is also mounting a dance routine in the small cantina where he works. Raul is the type who sees something he wants and takes it by any means possible, whether it be a colour TV or even his girl friend's sexually precocious daughter. He enters a TV competition to find Chile's Tony Manero lookalike, and takes care of one of his rivals in typically nasty fashion. Dressed in his gaudy white suit, Raul looks less like John Travolta and more like a seedy Al Pacino circa Scarface. But his selfish obsession towards these superficial distractions and his willingness to live in an unrealistic fantasy world blind him to the very real perils of Chile, where death squads roam the streets and plains clothes police snatch people off the streets. Raul is a repellent character, and Castro, who co-wrote the film with director Pablo Larrain, makes no attempt to garner sympathy for him. Larrain's direction is restrained and understated, which makes the grim reality of Raul's environment somehow seem more menacing.