Direction: Manuela Martelli
Country: Chile / Argentina
Chile ’76 is a slow-burning political drama thriller that shapes into a moody spying conspiracy. Actress-turned-director Manuela Martelli captures how it feels to live under the authoritarian regime of Augusto Pinochet, and how some privileged upper-middle class folks risk their lives to protect political resistants. She makes her directorial feature debut with this film.
Carmen (Aline Kuppenheim), the anxious wife of a renowned doctor in Santiago, takes a break from the city by spending a few days in the small village where she has a summer house, now under renovation. Not without surprise, the local priest, Father Sanchez (Hugo Medina), asks for her help with a severely wounded young man (Nicolás Sepúlveda), an opponent of the regime, whom he’s been sheltering in secret.
Growing fond of this sympathetic dissident, Carmen agrees to make the bridge between him and his group, so he can return safely. A scary and dangerous task that includes meeting points, signals and precise instructions to be followed.
The film takes its time to build, advancing steadily and surely but never expanding outside its atmospheric cocoon. We have the perfect sense that eyes are everywhere, even where least expected, and Martinelli plays with that factor. However, she misses the opportunity to create that type of tension that makes us shiver and sweat with fear. Preferring the cold approach, the sharply observed Chile ’76 carries off a readable merge between the personal and the political.
