‘El Conde’ (2023): The Netflix Auteur Celebration Ain’t Dead… Yet

Directed by: Pablo Larraín || Produced by: Juan de Dios Larraín

Screenplay by: Pablo Larraín, Guillermo Calderón || Starring: Jaime Vadell, Gloria Munchmeyer, Alfredo Castro, Paula Luchsinger, Catalina Guerra, Stella Gonet

Music by: Various Artists || Cinematography: Edward Lachman || Edited by: Sofia Subercaseaux || Country: Chile || Language: Spanish

Running Time: 110 minutes

In the early summer of 2022, Netflix reported its first major drop in overall subscribers in years and, with various other streaming services from major Hollywood studios (e.g. Disney+, Paramount+, HBO Max, Peacock) and rival tech firms (e.g. Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video) building steam, the default stance take by major media outlets as well as certain Internet discussion forums was to pile on the original streaming video on demand (SVOD) platform. Common points of criticism were the sizeable creative freedom and expensive budgets Netflix allowed many high-profile arthouse (e.g. Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog [2021], Bong Joon-ho’s Okja [2017], Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma [2018], Alejandro Inarritu’s Bardo [2022], Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story [2019], Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods [2020]) to mainstream Hollywood (e.g. Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman [2019], Michael Bay’s 6 Underground [2019], J. C. Chandor’s Triple Frontier [2019], David Fincher’s Mank [2020], the Russo Bros.’ The Gray Man [2022]) filmmakers in order to attract critical attention, awards circuit hype, and general auteur filmmaker street cred; regardless of their efforts, most people to this day regard Netflix Original Films with skepticism over anticipation (one could argue the opposite dynamic for Netflix Original Series), their high-concept blockbusters most of all (e.g. Bright [2017], Army of the Dead, Red Notice [both 2021]), while the company has yet to nail a Best Picture award at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as of this writing.

Frail and disillusioned, a centuries-old Pinochet vampire stalks Santiago from his nearby rural estate.

I, for one, find the idea of mocking a platform for funding the projects of filmmakers defined by their artistic vision, particularly if one considers themself a cinephile, questionable. Even if the era of Netflix’s “blank cheques” and near total artistic freedom for most established writer-directors is ending, I’m glad that at least certain private investors, most of them independent or mini-major US film studios or, yes, SVOD services, took chances on a great many sidestream productions that either would’ve flopped hard in the 2010s-2020s theatrical ecosystem or would’ve been relegated to short film concepts.

I maintain that stance even with weird, opaque passion-projects that don’t always fit my genre tastes, such as Pablo Larraín’s El Conde (“The Count”). A snarky, bloody black comedy-horror hybrid that lampoons the legacy of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006; lead man Jaime Vadell), the longest reigning national leader in Chile’s history, El Conde mixes delicious grayscale cinematography with a dry, deadpan sense of humor in the vein of Wes Anderson. The sheer amount of blood, gore, murder, and sexual assault intermixed with Pinochet’s spoiled adult children complaining about political persecution from the international community, squabbling over their inheritance of the Pinochet estate, and wondering out loud why it’s taken so long for their centuries old vampiric father to die, is a riot at times.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that the Pinochet patriarch is portrayed as a blood-sucking demon born in Paris before the French Revolution (1789-1799)? The main crux of El Conde is how fascism, or at least this Cold War era (1947-1991), Operation Condor-related Latin American version of it, lives on in certain aspects of Chilean society (and perhaps elsewhere in Latin America), waiting to be reborn again in a different form. Larraín avoids the pitfalls of heavyhanded preaching through humor, shooting his buffoonish characters in flat angle singles complaining about the pettiest of things while Vadell and his butler, Alfredo Castro as a former henchman involved in Pinochet’s state sponsored terrorism, grind human hearts in consumer-grade blenders for smoothies in the background.

El Conde’s major problem is how this gimmick of an R-rated Addams Family (1991, 1993, 1998) enmeshed within Latin American ideological warfare runs out of steam in its second act before the story comes alive again in its last twenty minutes. I won’t call El Conde a short film engorged to feature-length like I have many other, lesser “slow-burn” auteur pieces before it, but more rigorous editing could’ve tightened the narrative pace and emphasized the gory, sardonic highs of its first and third acts.

Paula Luchsinger (center) stars as an undercover nun (it was fun just writing that) who attempts to document the extensive, ongoing corruption of the Pinochet family.

Put another way, El Conde represents both the high highs and forgettable lows of Netflix’s past decade of funding and distribution of international auteur filmmakers outside the established theatrical exhibition marketplace. It is neither the best nor the worst of these recent high-profile Netflix Original Films that occasionally compete for industry awards but otherwise are invisible to the average cinemagoer. Simply being different in form from the typical big-budget, FX-driven blockbuster alone isn’t enough to warrant artistic praise, but committed execution of a stylized, cohesive, memorable cinematic vision is worth studying even if that vision doesn’t fit a reviewer’s specific genre preferences.

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SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: Pablo Larraín combines the tonal opposite genres of comedy and horror better than most filmmakers, even if he isn’t the most efficient storyteller. I’ll give the man credit for building a convincing minimalist fantasy universe through amusing alternative history that feels creepier than your typical Blumhouse horror franchise and funnier than the average quirky indie drama.

— However… the middle 40ish minutes of El Conde are a slog once it grows clear what the main “twist” of this dark family reunion is, and much of the deeper commentary on Pinochet’s controversial political legacy will fly over the heads of those who don’t follow regional Latin American geopolitics of the Cold War.

—> ON THE FENCE; El Conde has much to offer those in search of unique, eclectic black-and-white cinematography and morbid political humor, but both those things are, by definition, niche interests.

? Shouldn’t Vadell have searched for more vampire flesh to feast on instead of human blood?