El Conde: A Dark and Humorous Take on Chilean History
According to the premise of Pablo Larran’s latest film, El Conde, which is currently streaming on Netflix, history has a peculiar way of repeating itself. It is important to remember that the traumas, conflicts, and issues that occurred in the past continue to surface in the contemporary day. This resulted in the production of a movie on the dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, who came to power in a military coup in 1973 and passed away in 2006. This is a very different story. Instead, Pablo Larran decides to use humor to bring attention to the atrocities committed by this tyrant by creating a vampire version of Pinochet, who expresses a desire to pass away. In the movie, Pinochet continues to exist but in the form of an elderly vampire who is attempting to get his life in order before taking his own life. As he prepares to step down as President of Chile, he is concerned about his family’s future. He wants to clear any questions about the legitimacy of his financial success. When a new person comes into his life, everything shifts, and the morbid side of the vampire is given a fresh lease on life. The unsettling historical character will not be shown in a positive light even though the feature film will be presented in black and white.
El Conde Cast
Alfredo Castro
Catalina Guerra
Paula Luchsinger
Diego Muñoz
Gloria Münchmeyer
Amparo Noguera
Marcial Tagle
Jaime Vadell
Antonia Zegers
What is the Release Date of El Conde?
On August 31, 2023, the film El Conde made its world premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. It is expected to have a limited theatrical release on September 7, 2023, at cinemas in Chile and Argentina. The film’s worldwide premiere is set to take place on Netflix on September 15, 2023.
Who is the Director of El Conde?
Pablo Larran Matte is a filmmaker that hails from Chile. He is well-known for his work on films such as No (2012), Neruda (2016), Jackie (2016), and Spencer (2021), all of which were nominated for an Academy Award. In 2017, Larran and his brother Juan de Dios collaborated with Sebastián Lelio to co-produce A Fantastic Woman, the first Chilean movie to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Larrain was the director of the psychological romantic horror miniseries Lisey’s Story, which aired in 2021.
El Conde | Official Trailer | Netflix
What is the Plot of El Conde?
At the end of 250 years as a tyrant, the vampire Augusto Pinochet feels he has accomplished what he set out to do. This dictator was raised in France as a nobleman and lived his entire life as a vampire, much like Bram Stoker described. There, he delighted in upholding the order of the ruling class while taking the blood of young ladies who had never been sexually active. After relocating to Chile, he maintained his reign of terror and violence under the tyrannical control of the country’s military. He had pretended to be dead to keep his family safe. Still, he was eventually found hiding out at a country estate. After such a long existence, the vampire must come to terms with his legacy and his position in the world, which is now that of a thief rather than a world ruler. He is of the opinion that the enormous riches he has amassed over the course of several centuries ought to be accepted by the general public as being lawfully earned.
He despises that he has lost the tremendous respect he had earned in the past. Therefore, he decides to give up the eating of blood to lose his immortality. Pinochet, who is on a mission to commit suicide, enlists the help of an accountant to manage the remnants of his riches while he is looking for assistance with his quest. This vampire needs to find a solution to these disputes as soon as possible because his vast family is yearning for the inheritance that will come upon his passing. Unluckily for him, it turns out that the accountant was a nun working undercover to bring an end to Pinochet once and for all. The resurgent craving for blood, bloodshed, and evil that the deposed ruler experiences results from the budding love between the two characters. The following is the film’s official plot summary, as provided by Netflix:
El Conde is a comedy-horror film that imagines a parallel universe inspired by recent events in Chile’s history. Augusto Pinochet, a figure who has come to symbolize fascism worldwide, is portrayed in this movie as a vampire who keeps to himself in an abandoned mansion at the farthest southern point of the continent. Keeping his hunger for evil satisfied to maintain his existence. Pinochet, who has already lived for 250 years, has decided to end his practice of consuming his blood to give up the pleasure of living forever. He can’t stand that people still think of him as a thief after all this time. An unanticipated relationship provides him with the fresh motivation he needs to live a life marked by vitality and counterrevolutionary zeal despite his family’s disheartening and exploitative character.
