valis1949 TONY MANERO (dir. Pablo Larraín) The film is set in Chile during the fascist reign of Augusto Pinochet, and focuses on a man who is obsessed with John Travolta's discotheque super-star character in Saturday NIGHT FEVER. This might have been played for laughs, but Pablo Larrain's film is an evil fantasy of disco glory that portrays an obsessive and twisted character who is willing to kill to to fulfill his grotesque vision of acclaim. The frenzied violence in this film is so sudden and inexplicable that it literally takes your breath away. The film seems to present a subtle metaphor that compares the highly stylized nature of disco to the uncompromising fascist posturing of totalitarianism. ABSOLUTE MUST SEE

Erik Archer I'm looking at these IMDb reviews of Tony Manero,they're all missing the same thing, which tells you the caliber of lameness going on around here. There is an absurd, sick, humor to this movie. This is the Disco version of Man Bites Dog. If you haven't seen Man Bites Dog, then it's time to see Man Bites Dog. Then, maybe a week later, when the cinematic pallet is cleansed, watch Tony Manero. The cinematography is on the money. I can recommend taking a look at director Pablo Larrain's other work, pretty hip stuff. He kind of reminds me a little of Hal Hartley. This film should go down as an indie classic and be played frequently on IFC.

markgordonpalmer TONY MANERO (2008/ Chile - directed by Pablo Larrain) *SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW* Raul is a man just beyond middle-aged; a little bit past his prime. Not very good at anything. Except maybe dancing. Trouble is, Raul's knees aren't too happy these days about the kind of disco dance moves they are forced to take the strain of. But that's not going to stop Raul from doing what he now knows he was born to do - dance the disco! Meet Raul Peralta - a man looking for a way to escape from a life where all he has to rely on is mimicking the John Travolta role of iconic dancing king Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. For a living. Or for a chance of a living. It's a shot at stardom, doomed to fail, but what else is there to rely on? The dark days of the Pinochet dictatorship hang heavy in daily life all around him; his heart is blackened, and the soot falls heavy on the white suit he wears to the dance class. But the dancefloor holds more hope than any of the the streets this man walks down, any of the bedrooms he finds himself stumbling into.Raul spends all he can on cheap and chipped glass tiles to make a pathetic little disco dancefloor to impress his fellow dancers with; a group of wide-eyed and hope-drained followers who see the white suit Raul wears as evidence of freedom; of a better life. Raul's love life is equally bleak; though he does at least have one, and seeks occasional company in the arms of his dull-eyed but willing girlfriend and later in the arms and untidy bed of his girlfriend's daughter, a girl conspiring against the Pinochet regime but ultimately doomed to lose everything in every way possible. Raul is seen walking the perma-strutting daughter through the living room to the bedroom after a few too many drinks; right past her watching friends and right in front of his so sad-eyed but strangely passive girlfriend, in a quite unsettling and shocking scene.Raul's obsession with the film Saturday Night Fever, playing daily at the local picturehouse, is absolute. It's freedom and escape. But in the end; it's a curse and a slippery slope into total immorality. In real life, in Raul's reality - old women get mugged; projectionists get beaten to a pulp when they play (horror of horrors) the film Grease, where Travolta is no longer the harder-edged Tony Manero character, but a character all bright and breezy and wearing a different outfit, with different dance moves.Raul has devoted too many days of his life to practising the Manero dance moves; to wearing the exact same outfits; into trying to win the Tony Manero of Chile competition, to stop now. Trouble is - he's not a very good Tony Manero. He's more Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon or Scarface; more Tony Montana than Manero. In the original Saturday Night Fever, a girlfriend of Travolta's character compares him to Pacino after kissing him on the dancefoor: "Ohh, I just kissed Al Pacino" she croons - a nice touch and neat link to the original movie.Raul can dance - but not that well. He slips and stumbles at key moves; his knee giving way. The lingering camera doesn't zoom in on any reaction when the inevitable, literal fall - or slip from assumed perfection, comes. Raul carries on with the dance - and the camera does too. In a way, the camera tries to hide what Raul is also hiding; as if we may not notice. But we do. This is masterly direction from Pablo Larrain. In the last reel there's a chance it may not all end in absolute failure for Raul. A decision in the final stages of the dance competition could go either way, with just two contenders up for the crown at the last dance saloon -could Raul actually win? Is he the 'new best Tony Manero impersonator' in Chile? He will either come first or second. But a runner-up is just another nobody. When asked what his profession is at the dance contest, Raul looks puzzled: "This" he replies, without seeing the irony.Raul may do something unexpected and nasty to the suit of a rival (in a scene that is really quite disgusting and puts to bed any hope that Raul isn't as depraved as he may at first appear), but it's his own white disco suit that is forever ruined; that will forever be missing the right number of buttons to make him a true Manero impersonator - a suit that is already splashed with the blood of the innocent.The performance of Alfredo Castro as Raul is heart-wrenching, absolute and intense. It's real, without the barriers of a performance to distract; he is Raul, in the same way he will never be Tony Manero.This remains a film that refutes the beauty and passion in hardship; denies its existence; embraces the blackest humour and lives the darkest of days. There's no bad boy made good moral to be found here. No pot of gold or winning ticket at the end of this rainbow; this great glass elevator is chipped and broken and going nowhere.If you thought the real Tony Manero had it bad, you ain't seen nothing yet! by ~ Mark Gordon Palmer

Chris Knipp The protagonist of this film from Chile set in 1978 Santiago at the height of Augusto Pinochet's reign of terror is a murderer and petty thief whose only goal in life is to dance like John Travolta's character Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. It's already a year later, but Fever's still playing and Raul (Alfredo Castro) goes to watch in an empty theater, repeating Travolta's lines with a heave accent and mimicking his arm gestures when he dances. Raul is the lead dancer, if it makes any sense to say that, in a shabby cantina where an older woman, a younger woman, his middle-aged girlfriend, and a youth all seem to adore him even though he is tired and fifty-two and can't get an erection any more. Outside it's a quietly terrifying world where soldiers patrol the streets in open trucks with rifles raised and plainclothes agents stop people at random and you can get shot for being out of place or having political fliers. Early on Raul beats an old woman he's just taken home after she's been mugged. He seems to have killed her, just to get her little color TV. He kills again, each time without any qualms, to get something. He smashes the cantina stage floor and is bargaining with a dealer in loose building materials for glass bricks to make the stage floor like the movie disco, lit from below. He also wants to compete for "Tony Manero of Chile" on a little TV contest show. At times Larrain's film seems crude and clumsy, but it's nonetheless hard to get out of your head. Obviously Raul's behavior is a metaphor for the morally bankrupt-from-the-start Pinochet regime and the film does an excellent job of conveying the absolute sleaziness of absolutely everything--a terrible world pushed into existence by the CIA and perhaps now dominated by slick new US products like the Travolta picture. Just as Raul will kill to get his pseudo-disco floor effect (which is totally shoddy), the others on his little neighborhood dance team will betray each other to stay in good with the despicable regime. Raul walks away from his heinous crimes with no fear of capture; the regime is busy perpetrating its own crimes and its own terror. The concentration on the goings and comings of Raul give the picture unity, and the little cantina crew has a classic quality. This is down-market, black-humor Fellini. Wilma (Elsa Poblete) runs the place. She claims to adore Raul and want to run away to him (to where?) He's stuck with Cony (Amparo Noguera), but now prefers her young, possibly pregnant daughter Pauli (Paola Lattus). A willing helper but potential threat is the young man in the group, Goyo (Hector Morales), who is involved in anti-Pinochet activities, but also wants to compete in the tacky talent contest for the Tony Manero prize against Raul. Raul sees to that, in the crudest and sleaziest manner possible. One day Raul goes to the movie to see Saturday Night Fever and it's been replace with Grease. You can bet there's hell to pay. It feels like the movie will stoop to anything, but then, so would a dictator. The raw, hand-held camera work helps maintain the down-and-dirty intensity, as does faded, dingy-looking color. As Leslie Felprin notes in the Variety review, the camera follows around Raul as doggedly as the Dardennes have done in some of their films, but without any of the humanism or positive endings the Dardennes would provide. The action has a picaresque quality that makes it seem plausible: you just watch in mild horror to see what happens next. To top it all off, Alfredo Castro, in the brave and haunting lead performance, looks a lot like Al Pacino--a Pacino who hasn't been prettied up and will never see a fat paycheck. This is Pablo Larrain's second feature, and a selection of the New York Film Festival of 2008. It was part of the Directors Fortnight series at Cannes this year. Theatrical opening in France December 17, 2008.