In 1973 Chile’s socialist government was overthrown by a military junta led by a general. Augusto Pinochet with US support. Thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands fled the country under Pinochet’s dictatorship. This dictatorship lasted his 17 years and was maintained by violence.
In the new film Chile ’76, director Manuela Martelli joins the company of Chilean filmmakers such as Pablo Larrain and Sebastian Leiro. They have produced thought-provoking films that reflect the Pinochet regime and its impact on everyday life. Martelli was first inspired by the story from a source close to home. She imagined the loss her grandmother felt when she committed suicide in 1976, during one of the most violent times of the dictatorship, before Martelli was born.
The main character of “Chile ’76” is Carmen (Aline Kuppenheim), an imposing middle-aged woman. She was her grandmother, a flight attendant in her career, and now lives a comfortable bourgeois life with her husband in Santiago. When the story begins, she is in the middle of overseeing the renovation of her family’s seaside villa. Carmen devotes herself to her philanthropic work alone, under the guidance of the town’s optimistic priest, Father Sanchez (Ugo her Medina).
Carmen is uncomfortable with the perceived cruelty around her. Early on, she witnesses her distraught neighbor being dragged onto the street. But her comfortable life for Carmen is not directly interrupted until Father Sanchez asks her to look after a fugitive hidden in her church. She acquiesces and restores her injured revolutionary, Elias (Nicholas Sepulveda), to health. She carries antibiotics for his injuries and lies to dubious authorities to cover up her tracks. Anxiety becomes Carmen’s constant companion, as the phone rings on a potentially tapped line and her neighbors pry open and ask inconvenient questions.
Martelli’s films demonstrate a remarkable ability to reconstruct an era, with a view to recreating the atmosphere and emotions of those times. She shoots in a seaside town relatively unchanged since the ’70s, complementing crumbling facades with wood-paneled interiors on her sets. It’s a worn and warm world. The wallpaper is also a cozy plaid.
But Martelli’s detailed and beautiful frames are no sign of a blank aesthetic. Her eye for composition reflects that of her protagonist, a man of elegant taste who is drawn into political intrigue that interferes with her ability to redesign. and orchestral music, and serves as an indicator of Carmen’s justified paranoia, entering the moments when her daily life is at its most disturbed. As an entrant into the ever-growing canon of Chilean cinema in response to Pinochet’s dictatorship, ‘Chile ’76’ is a sly genre exercise, a domestic until political oppression takes the form of his spy thriller. An example of how to squeeze melodrama.
Chile ’76
Unrated. Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. at the theater.
