The Prince (El princípe)

Jaime and Ricardo in better times.

(2019) Drama (Artsploitation) Juan Carlos Maldonado, Alfredo Castro, Lucas Balmaceda, Sebastián Ayala, Cesare Serra, Catalina Martin, José Antonio Raffo, Paola Volpato, Nicolás Zárate, Paula Zuñiga. Directed by Sebastián Muñoz

 

The thing about prison movies is that they lend themselves to exploitation. Very rarely do we get anything set in a prison that is thought-provoking without it sinking into a morass of sexuality and violence.

In this Chilean film, there is certainly a lot of sex. Jaime (Maldonado), described in the press materials as a “hot-tempered narcissist,” impulsively stabs someone to death and ends up imprisoned. This is during the Pinochet regime in Chile, one of the most brutal and repressive governments ever, so don’t expect a whole lot of rehabilitation going on here. In fact, once he’s thrown into the hellhole, the key is neatly disposed of and he’s expected to rot, or end up dead.

But the thing about Jaime is that he’s a resilient sort and the thing he has going for him most is that he’s a really good-looking guy. That’s why the BMIP (Big Man in Prison), Potro (Castro), latches on to Jaime and makes him his boy toy. This doesn’t sit well with his previous plaything, who snidely dubs Jaime as “The Prince” and the nickname sticks.

The relationship between Jaime and Potro is bittersweet; Potro may have swagger out in the yard but deep down inside he yearns for prison and is this close to breaking. The brutal, sadistic guards don’t make life any easier for the men in the cell block, which actually ends up suiting Jaime just fine. The trajectories of the two men are aimed in the same direction for a time, but it becomes clear that they are headed in different directions, which isn’t going to be good news for one of them.

Muñoz interweaves what’s going on in the prison with flashbacks to Jaime’s life before he murdered someone. We see his previous relationship with Ricardo (Zárate) and see in it a parallel. This isn’t about freedom; it’s about how we tend to follow the same paths over and over again.

There is a good deal of gay sex, but don’t expect flowers and rainbows. It’s brutal and joyless, all about release and power. Even when we see Jaime having sex with a woman earlier in the film, the sex is still the same – absolutely no desire to satisfy his partner so long as he himself gets off. When he gets what he wants, he’s gone. That element is also present in the sexual encounters in prison. There’s nothing sexy about it, although I’m sure there are a lot of straight women who will nod knowingly at the site – and more than a few gay men as well. The sex begins to become a numbing agent, but then again, what are you going to do with your time in prison.

Maldonado is certainly a handsome man, but his portrayal of Jaime is extremely low-key. There isn’t a lot of depth to the character; we know he’s self-involved, we know he is all about the booty call, we know he’s not terribly bright. Beyond that, it feels like he’s just treading water as an actor, which isn’t what you want from a lead performance. In a lot of ways Castro, who starred in one of Chile’s most honored films (Tony Manero), gives Potro the depth that Jaime lacks. I think Jaime is supposed to be the protagonist, but he ends up being almost secondary in his own story. That’s kind of an odd feeling, and I’m not sure if the decision to make it so was a conscious one by Muñoz or if Castro is just that good an actor. A little bit of both, I suspect.

Prudes and those made uncomfortable by gay sex will not like this much. There is a lot to unpack here and that’s okay, but still I ended up wishing that Maldonado had given us more to hang our hats on with Jaime. A little bit more depth here and this would have been an extraordinary film, instead of just an ordinary one.

REASONS TO SEE: Castro is an incendiary presence.
REASONS TO AVOID: Jaime doesn’t have enough depth as a character to carry the film.
FAMILY VALUES: There’s a ton of male on male sex, graphic nudity, rape, profanity, violence and disturbing images.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first feature film as a director for Muñoz; his background is as in art direction.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: AppleTV, Fandango Now, Vimeo
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/8/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 83% positive reviews, Metacritic: No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: A Prophet
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: The Medicine

Tony Manero

Tony Manero or Al Pacino?

(Lorber) Alfredo Castro, Paolo Lattus, Hector Morales, Amparo Noguera, Elsa Poblete. Directed by Pablo Larrain

We tend to take our freedoms for granted. In other cultures, those freedoms are non-existent; even a suggestion of non-conformity can lead to arrest or worse. In Chile under the dictator Agustin Pinochet the rule was by an iron fist without the benefit of a velvet glove.

Raul Peralta (Castro) lives in a working class neighborhood in Santiago and he dreams of fame and fortune. He is fascinated by Saturday Night Fever, then a current hit movie, and identifies with the central character, Tony Manero who in turn dreams that his skills as a dancer will elevate him from his working class neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Raul shows up for a television show that awards prizes to the best impersonator, but on the wrong day. He stands in line with a group of hangdog Chuck Norris wannabes, only to be told that the Tony Manero show is the following week.

Despondent, he goes to a Santiago cinema to lose himself in the lights and the glamour of Saturday Night Fever yet again. At home, he sees an old lady carrying her groceries home set upon by a group of young hoodlums. He helps her pick up her groceries and escorts her back to her own apartment where he suddenly and viciously beats her to death.

Raul, his girlfriend Cony (Noguera), his friend Goyo (Morales) and Cony’s young daughter Pauli (Lattus) make up a troupe that aspire to perform in the rundown nightclub run by Wilma (Poblete) who is also Raul’s landlady. Raul is obviously the alpha male in this ragtag troupe; he sees himself as a virile, attractive and masculine. In reality, he is impotent, unable to perform either with Cony or, in a riveting but strange scene, with Pauli. His focus is on his fantasy; he goes so far as to replace the dance floor at the bar with a glass brick one along the lines of the one seen in the movie.

The group is already starting to implode as petty jealousies and ideological differences lead to one of the group members informing on the others. Raul leaves them to fend for themselves. Dodging police patrols, he finally makes it to the competition. Who will be the winner?

Our glimpses into Pinochet’s Chile have been very rare, and Larrain gives us a good look without it being overwhelming. He prefers to leave Pinochet in the background, instead concentrating on the story set there and that’s a wise move. Larrain has said that the movie is an allegory for life under Pinochet in Chile and to a certain extent, it is.

What I find fascinating is the buy-in to the American fantasies that have been imported into Chile. The people of Santiago find escape in any way they can; their lives are so repressive that they find the need to take on other lives, other personalities in order to get past the feelings of helplessness they must have constantly.

Raul’s sexual impotence is also a metaphor for this, the impotence of the Chilean people. They are ruled by guns and fear and can’t see a way out of it. This is a strong, prideful people so it must have been extra galling to have been so powerless.

Castro, a renowned Chilean stage actor and director, looks a little like Al Pacino but gives an outstanding performance as the amoral Raul. His only passion is for the role he so desperately longs to inhabit; when that is threatened, he reacts viciously. He defecates on his friend Goyo’s suit because he feels threatened that he might beat him in the television competition.

This isn’t always an easy movie to watch and in some ways, Castro does too good a job in making the unlikable Raul truly repugnant. It gets to the point where you want him to get caught for his crimes which would of course mean the movie would come to an end but the sad truth is that a penny ante sociopath could easily fly under the radar in a place where brutal repression was so in vogue. That’s the most horrific part of the movie by far.

WHY RENT THIS: A chilling look into a sociopath in Pinochet-era Chile. Castro gives a riveting performance.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The lead character may well be too unsympathetic to get behind.

FAMILY VALUES: Lots of nudity and sex, as well as extreme violence. Not for children in any way, shape or form.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This was Chile’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It didn’t win the nomination.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Film Geek