EL CONDE (2023)

New streaming on Netflix!
Directed by Pablo Larraín.
Written by Guillermo Calderón, Pablo Larraín.
Starring Jaime Vadell, Gloria Münchmeyer, Alfredo Castro, Paula Luchsinger, Stella Gonet, Catalina Guerra, Amparo Noguera, Antonia Zegers, Marcial Tagle, Diego Muñoz, Clemente Rodríguez, Rosario Zamora, Marcelo Alonso

An aged vampire known as El Conde (Jaime Vadell) decides he is ready to die after 200 years of drinking blood and leading armies into war. As his human family gathers around him in his final days, they are eager to receive a wealthy inheritance and possibly earn El Conde’s bite to turn them into vampires before his passing. But a young bright-eyed nun named Carmencita (Paula Luchsinger) arrives at the mansion with an agenda of her own sparking new life in the elderly vampire and El Conde now thinks he might not be as ready to die as he thought he was.

Irreverent, strange, and often downright kooky, EL CONDE feels like a Chilean version of THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS with vampires. The matter of factly way Jaime Vadell as El Conde goes about his life and speaks about his own death is absolutely amusing. He is a tired, old vampire. He’s too old for this shit. And those around him are just waiting for him to die. It’s a wonderfully humorous take on malaise—someone down in the dumps and completely giving up the ghost. That is until the lovely Carmencita (Paula Luchsinger) enters the scene, and I can understand why El Conde is so smitten. The French actress is charming and extremely easy on the eyes, offering up something fresh and new in the vampire’s life. But seeing El Conde bumble his way around, smitten with this woman who is a fraction of his age, is downright hilarious at times. First and foremost, EL CONDE is a wonderfully clever and funny film. It’s humor is subversive, more amusing than laugh out loud funny, but there are moments of sheer hilarity. Like Wes Anderson’s films which often focus on the upper crust and their disconnect from their own feelings, EL CONDE offers up a take on sheer snobbery and backstabbynness that made me chuckle over and over again.

But EL CONDE is not all for laughs. I wouldn’t say it’s a scary film, but it does go quite over the top with the gore when things get real and dangerous. So many beheaddings. So, so many beheadings go on in this movie. And while everyone is amusing by turning the tables and betraying one another, the stakes are very life and death, making you actually care about these offbeat characters. This movie never forgets it has a vampire as the central character, and though it is amusing seeing El Conde attempt to keep his balance as he takes flight into the night to feed, there is always a dark tone to it all.

Again like Wes Anderson, director Pablo Larraín offers up some absorbing framework. So much meticulous work seems to have been put into these elaborate scenes. Everything is decadent and detailed, especially the absorbing rooms of El Conde’s mansion. There are scenes from throughout history that feel genuine and well researched. This is simply a rich looking movie that excels at showing how the upper class live and what they take for granted.

In the end, EL CONDE is a satirical cautionary tale of getting everything you want and still not being happy. It depicts the pursuit of happiness and how hard it is when one comes to the realization that nothing will ever be enough. El Conde can take whatever he wants, but the one thing he strives for, happiness. I’m sure there are some political themes going on, but me not knowing about Chilean history, most of it probably went over my head—though I did catch the elitist attitude as El Conde categorizes European blood as the tastiest while Southern American the least. Nevertheless, my lack of knowledge of the world history didn’t make me enjoy EL CONDE any less. While I think the ending of EL CONDE comes around in a rather out of the blue fashion, the road there is decadent, sinful, and undeniably fun to watch.

Check out the trailer here!!