Pablo Larrain Double Feature (DVD)

Tony Manero

OFFICIAL SELECTION
CANNES / NEW YORK / TORONTO

Raul Peralta, a middle-aged criminal in 1970's Chile, is obsessed the idea of impersonating Tony Manero, John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever. Every Saturday night, he unleashes his passion for the film's music by imitating his idol and leading a small group of dancers as they perform at a bar in the outskirts of the city. His dream of being recognized as a successful showbiz star is about to become a reality when a Tony Manero impersonating contest is announced on national television. However, his obsession to reproduce his idol's likeness and perfect his act drives him to commit a series of violent crimes and thefts, leading to shocking violence and murder.

Set during the tough social context of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, Tony Manero is an award winning thriller that Entertainment Weekly calls, "a dark, edgy movie."

Post Mortem

The second part of director Pablo Larrain's celebrated trilogy about Chile during the dictatorial reign of Augusto Pinochet, POST MORTEM is a "grim, intense, mordantly comic little film" (A.O. Scott, New York Times) about a civil servant transformed by the 1973 military coup.

Mario (Alfredo Castro, Tony Manero) is an unassuming state employee who transcribes notes during autopsies. Furtive and lonely, he becomes obsessed with his neighbor, the dancehall girl Nancy (Antonia Zegers), who is involved with a group of left-wing activists. With the coup, and the death of President Salvador Allende, Nancy's friends are hunted down, and Mario's hospital becomes clogged with the bodies of dissenters. Soon the violence filters into Mario's psyche, and he begins to break down, much like his country.

Following the brilliant Tony Manero (2008, available from Kino Lorber), and preceding the recently completed No (2012), Post Mortem is "a new and original vision of political terror" (J. Hoberman, Blouin Art Info) that remains urgently relevant to the repressive regimes of today.