THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
From the outset, there is something insituable, between two lands, in Azor, which takes place in Argentina in the early 1980s, at the height of the military dictatorship, but whose hero is a Swiss banker speaking very accented Spanish. This first feature film, one of the most promising seen in recent times, in that it explores unusual fictional lands, is the work of a young Swiss director, Andreas Fontana. Born in Geneva in 1982, having lived for some time in Buenos Aires, he co-wrote the screenplay with Mariano Llinas, an extravagant figure in Argentinian independent cinema with a fine line of labyrinth films to his credit (The Flower2018).
The word “Azor”, raised in the title like a talisman, itself evokes some fantastic creature or South American deity, but in fact belongs to the Swiss patois, where it contains an invitation to be silent, not to say too much. Secrecy (banking, but not only) is therefore the privileged motive and the indistinct fuel of a story that continues to encompass gray areas.
Yvan De Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione), at the head of a Geneva private bank, arrives with his wife, Inès (Stéphanie Cléau), in a Buenos Aires squared by the police forces, while his partner, a man named Keys, s is volatilized. While retracing his tracks, De Wiel undertakes the rounds of his wealthy clients, in order to reassure them, to glean also, indirectly, with all possible tweezers, some information about the disappeared.
Strange rumors float on his account, he is credited with questionable relationships, unpredictable behavior, dangerous tampering and other underground manipulations. The banker and his wife cross the Argentina of the junta like a game of goose, passing through all the “boxes” of the upper business bourgeoisie, in a series of places of power: sumptuous villas with swimming pools, vast haciendas in the heart of the pampas, racetracks, luxury hotels, circles of influence fairs.
imagine the worst
Advancing with muffled steps, made up of confabulations and hidden exchanges, Azor bathes in a polished language, that of the elites, which is especially valid for what it hides, or makes heard half-word. Beneath the veneer of codified usages, this business language turns out to be full of innuendo, of messages to be grasped, sometimes heavy with threats – a reptilian matter which shines at pretending to be something else. This opacity is the very object of the film, which never seeks to dissipate it, but on the contrary caresses it like a reservoir of fiction, this great paranoid machine leaving it up to the viewer to imagine the worst.
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