What I love about a film festival such as Cannes are making discoveries such as Dogtooth‘s Giorgos Lanthimos, and in the previous year, for anyone who is a regular reader of the site would know how impressed I was by Pablo Larrain’s sophomore feature, Tony Manero — the film with a split personality. As I mention in my Cannes predictions, I’m convinced that Larrain will once again be at the festival this year with Post Mortem, a story that is also juxtaposed against Pinochet’s early rule. And speaking of Chilean presidents, Patricio Guzman who might be known for his 2007 documentary film Salvador Allende, has directed Nostalgia For Light – a doc film that received what I think was French financing and which could be a sidebar or a special screening offering at the festival.
Post Mortem sees Alfredo Castro (lead in his previous film) play Mario, 55, a man who works in a morgue typing autopsy reports. In the midst of the 1973 Chilean coup, he fantasizes about his neighbor, a cabaret dancer, Nancy, who mysteriously disappears on September the 11th. After a violent Army raid on her family’s home, he hears about the arrest of her brother and father, a prominent Communist and Salvador Allende supporter. Troubled and madly passionate over the loss of his would-be lover, Mario begins his frantic search for Nancy. Allende’s government has been overthrown and people are dying in the streets. The Army seizes the morgue and numerous corpses pile up, but Mario can’t get his mind off of Nancy.
