The 59th BFI London Film Festival is just round the corner and our blog will be posting daily updates with everything that happens during the event. To build excitement while counting down the days, we begin our coverage with a few recommendations, the first of which is Pablo Larraín’s extraordinary allegory about the sins of the Church, ‘The Club’.
In a misty coastal town four men and their housekeeper share a grey but placid existence. They go through their everyday tasks enjoying what seems like an early retirement whose calm will soon be compromised by the arrival of three strangers, one shortly after each other.
The first one is Father Matías with whom we learn this is a household owned by the Catholic Church where priests who have been excommunicated are sent in penitence to pray for their sins. Matías is followed to the porch of his new residence by one of his former altar boys, who begins shouting incriminating accusations in grim detail. In the rush of panic to avoid a scandal, tragedy ensues.
Shortly afterwards, another young priest is sent to investigate if the house is fit for purpose as the place for austerity and repentance that is meant to be. From that moment on, The Club morphs into both a brilliantly bleak character study, through the individual interviews the newly arrived cleric holds with every member of the household – each of them symbolizing one of the infamous scandals the Church has been accused of, from child abuse to its alliance with military regimes- and also into a darkly atmospheric, almost Hitchcockian, thriller through the tenants’ plot to avoid the indignities the loss of their discreet shelter would bring; all laced with corrosive, dark humour.
Not a stranger to exploring history’s open wounds, Pablo Larraín follows his Oscar nominated comedy ‘No’, the third installment on a trilogy dedicated to his country’s recent past, with a much bleaker if equally accomplished piece of work, whose mood recalls that of moral decay and despicable behaviour of the film that began that trilogy, ‘Tony Manero’. ‘The Club’ was filmed using a palette of greyed and faded tones that perfectly enhances its obscure story-line. An extraordinary cast comprised by many of his regular actors (Roberto Farías; Antonia Zegers; Alfredo Castro: Jaime Vadell; etc…) delivers one of the best ensemble work seen in recent times.
The Chilean auteur on a recent interviewed affirmed that cinema can’t be used to denounce a situation, only to show it; a goal that he brilliantly achieves with the huge controversies that have surrounded the religious institution in recent years. Suitably featured in the festival‘s Debate strand; this thought-provoking film raises timely questions about the privileged treatment its members receive when stepping outside the law; even when their condition of moral and spiritual guides make their actions more reprehensible. It also showcases the Church’s secretive ways aimed at protecting reputation rather than support its black sheep’s innocent victims.
Winner of the Berlinale’s Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize and also submitted by Chile for the Foreign Language Academy award; the first of the LFF screenings we have attended is likely to be hailed as one of the films of the year and sets the bar sky high for the rest of the programme. ★★★★★
