Tony Manero

Unusual Look at Chile under Pinochet, Encumbered by Its Shabby Style.
In late-1970s Chile, General Augusto Pinochet rules through terror, while Raul Peralta Peredes (Alfredo Castro) dreams of being Tony Manero, hero of the popular American movie "Saturday Night Fever" that plays at the local cinema. Raul is 52 years old, a sociopath who murders and steals whenever the whim strikes him, and he can't dance especially well. He lives and works at a small downscale restaurant that puts on something in the way of dinner theater. Raul, his lover Cony (Amparo Noguera), her daughter Pauli (Paola Lattus), and a young leftist employee named Goyo (Hector Morales) rehearse their version of "Saturday Night Fever"s dance moves for their little show, and Raul eagerly awaits his chance to become the "Chilean Tony Manero" in a television contest.

"Tony Manero" takes place over the course of a week, as Raul murders, steals, alternately ignores or abuses his companions, desperately constructs a glass dance floor that can be lit from below, and, well, awaits the...

Santiago de Chile, 1978
This is a clever movie that works on many different levels set in the sketchy world of ordinary life under Chile's Pinochet in the 70s. That world is backdrop for a main character, Raul Peralta, who is obsessed with the Saturday Night Fever character Tony Manero and who in his efforts to prepare for a local neighborhood stage performance of the movie, will stop at nothing to ensure that everything is just PERFECT. It's an 'ends justify the means' routine for him that includes murdering an old lady in her home for her television (so he can get money to make his stage for the show). Nothing will stand in his way! Perhaps the character is meant to mirror Pinochet's own plan for running the country and on this level it goes beyond the black humor and touches the mind of art. Shot beautifully but with a feeling of 'anything goes' menace in poor Chilean neighborhoods, the movie is interesting to watch. It has occasional slow moments and scenes that may go on just a little longer than...

Bunuel Lives!
"Tony Manero" dangles 70's Chile from a nightmarish memory. Greed, insanity, and US Exports flit above the grunge world of Raul Peralta and rule this little man so desperately in tow to his ego. Sad, but undeniably alluring, Alfredo Castro plays Raul Peralta so perfectly. His deliberate movements, his unreadable but nonetheless hyper-expressive face, catch you up so that his periodic violent acts seem almost illusory. "Did I just see that?" How could I find myself rooting for him in the "Chilean Tony Manero" TV contest? And, at the end, why did I feel that an injustice had been done to HIM?

Pablo Larrain burst out onto the international scene with an Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film nomination for his film "No", the third in a trilogy with "Tony Manero". Having seen this and his second film in the group, "Post Mortem", I can see that Larrain works with essences. For "Tony Manero", it's horror. A film poem, succinct in it's message: all roads led to hell. Fever,...

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