Director: Manuela Martelli
Writers: Manuela Martelli and Alejandra Moffat
Stars: Aline Kuppenheim, Hugo Medina, Nicolás Sepúlveda
Synopsis: Chile, 1976. Carmen heads off to her beach house. When the family priest asks her to take care of a young man he is sheltering in secret, Carmen steps onto unexplored territories, away from the quiet life she is used to.
Impressively so, Manuela Martelli demonstrates her exceptional directorial capabilities with Chile ‘76 – a film that blends arthouse visual sensibilities with Hitchcockian thriller elements to create a tension-filled and fearless take on a year in the Pinochet dictatorship, anchored by a superb performance from Aline Küppenheim. This “political nail-biter” focuses on forging its atmosphere and curating complex imagery rather than implementing the usual genre elements seen in today’s cinema.
Out of the many feature-length directorial debuts in this year’s New Directors/New Films festival program, Chile ‘76 (formerly titled 1976) is the boldest and most impactful of the bunch. Actress-turned-filmmaker Manuela Martelli (known for her work in Machua and B-Happy) has created a suspenseful and gutsy story about a year in an authoritarian regime, particularly the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. Before the film truly starts, a deep and dark sense of dread lingers around in the setting’s atmosphere, replicating how Chile was suffocating under Pinochet’s reign in power. This trepidation in the background paves the way for the film’s introductory scene. A middle-aged woman, Carmen (Aline Kuppenheim), is at a local paint store looking through an Italian traveling book for the best shade of pink to paint her beach house. There’s a sort of delicateness to this quick glimpse into Carmen’s life. As her cigarette burns, she brushes through the pages like there is not a worry in the world.
Carmen asks for more blue shades to match the pink-tinted skies of the image that inspired her to choose that color. However, there’s a contrast between the image chosen and the scene that occurs after. She selects a picture of Doge’s Palace during the sunset; Carmen wants the pastel-colored hue of the evening covering the skies. What a lot of people don’t know is that such a place, which looks stunning from that frame, housed thousands of prisoners and tortured them for centuries. The picturesque Venice landmark and Carmen’s life both have something ominous creeping underneath them – a façade filled with beauty covering up the darkness. As the camera lingers on, the beautiful colors of blue and pink mixing together in the blender, the evils of Pinochet strike almost instantly. Outside the paint store, a kidnapping is taking place. We never actually see the woman being abducted, but the viewer hears her screams – begging to be let go.
A drop of the pink-colored paint falls onto Carmen’s shoes as a reminder of such an event taking place; that drop stands in for a blood-stain, hinting at something absent at that precise moment yet inevitable in the long run of Manuela Martelli’s narrative. This is a brilliant introduction to Chile ‘76. It is fascinating how Martelli has captured such strong emotions and imagery filled with plenty of analogies in just a single scene, all worth digesting and examining once the film ends. We get to know her sharp and astute skills as a director mere seconds into her movie. After the woman has been seized, we follow Carmen’s upper-middle-class life as she renovates her family’s beach house. But, her life is about to turn upside down when the local priest, Father Sanchez (Hugo Medina), convinces Carmen to take care of a “common criminal” who has suffered a gunshot wound, Elías (Nicolás Sepúlveda). This sets the path for a new major shift in her lifestyle as she later becomes acquainted with the man and learns that he’s running away from Pinochet’s police force.
Paranoia and fear run through her veins as the rush of inevitability and suspicion intertwines, fueling Carmen’s anxiety about government-caused gender oppression. In Chile ‘76, Manuela Martelli offers a fresh and vastly rich perspective on the torments and terrors of Pinochet’s reign in power. By combining Hitchcockian and 1970s thriller elements in the vein of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (with each dialogue set-piece containing pressure-cooker suspense) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, Martelli captures that pulsating adrenaline rush of uncertainty and dread-tainted serendipity. She builds tension by curating a feeling of the “will they, won’t they”; the audience is worried about Carmen and her family as she continues to aid the injured Elías. What will happen to her if they catch her? Is someone carefully watching all of her moves? The hesitation of every characters’ decisions (and their outcomes) keeps the audience guessing until the very end, fascinated by the various upcoming twists and turns. However, there are a couple of moments in which you know in which direction the story is headed.
Outside of Martelli’s vision and Soledad Rodríguez’s cinematography, there are various forms in which Chile ‘76 demonstrates paranoia and unease. As Camila Mercadal’s nifty editing shapes the growing anxiety of Carmen’s apprehensions, the synth-focused score by Mariá Portugal creates a disorienting effect that replicates the country’s restlessness. While every facet is impressive and adds to the film’s ever-growing tension, Chile ‘76 wouldn’t work without Aline Kuppenheim’s performance. Her delicate facial expressions and smooth voice intertwine with the fear of being hunted and later getting caught. Out of the films I have seen, this is my favorite performance of hers. You are worried for her throughout the runtime, from the film’s thrilling introduction to the more significant dangers that arise later in the narrative.
Chile ‘76 doesn’t capture the complete feeling of life under Pinochet. But the fresh perspective gives it a sense of importance due to Martelli’s innovative grasp on tackling the theme of oppression. Instead of dwelling on the macropolitical aspects or tunning a melodramatic tone, Manuela Martelli inputs an arthouse style and combines it with conventional thriller sensibilities. This approach helps uplift some of the weaker elements in the film, such as the lack of in-depth character development outside of Carmen, because it is gripping and increasingly far more interesting than the multi-million-dollar pictures we see from the bigger studios.
Grade: B+
