THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
The years of Chilean dictatorship continue to nourish fiction. A furrow already dug by Pablo Larrain in Tony Manero (2008), in Santiago 73, post-mortem (2010), or in No (2012). The subject was revived this year, at the Directors’ Fortnight, in Cannes, in the form of a powerful first feature film, 1976by Manuela Martelli – the story of a woman from a bourgeois background who unexpectedly finds herself hiding an injured young activist.
The scenario of I tremble, O matador, by Rodrigo Sepulveda, based on the novel of the same name (published in 2001, published by Denoël in 2004) by LGBT activist Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015), is not so far from 1976 : the film, audience award at the Thessaloniki festival (Greece), tells the story of a transvestite, in the midst of the Pinochet dictatorship, in 1986, who, out of love for a young guerrilla, agrees to store weapons in order to an attack against the dictator and his close guard.
Let us add that the actor embodying the transvestite, Alfredo Castro, is none other than the main actor of Tony Manero, of Santiago 73, post-mortem, and also ofThe Club (2015), by the same Pablo Larrain, in which he was a pedophile priest.
Sentenced to hiding
In I tremble, O matador, Alfredo Castro, who plays La Loca del Frente, a cabaret singer on the comeback, excels in credibility and naturalness. With his career with Pablo Larrain, the actor is on familiar ground with regard to the historical context of the film. The author ofaurora (2014) adds an intimate, sexual dimension, which is no less political, by cleverly highlighting the paradox of a revolutionary left that has often lost interest in the fate of homosexuals. It is not only in Chile, moreover, that sexual and gender minorities take second place, as these issues are often considered less crucial than political issues. The character of La Loca pronounces this very apt sentence: “The day when a revolution will give way to mad women, give me a sign”, she says to her guerrilla friend (Leonardo Ortizgris), a nice, slightly inconsistent boy, who is sometimes hard to imagine with a revolver in his hand, defying the highest authorities.
The historical pretext of the film – the preparation of the attack against Pinochet – is barely sketched out. Nothing to see with No, for example, where dictatorship and propaganda were at the heart of the matter. I tremble, O matador is a thwarted love story, centered on a character who survives everyday life, homosexuality being then prohibited in Chile (it will not be legalized until the end of the 1990s). The activist, too, is condemned to hiding. This is both the limit of this sentimental drama, the script sometimes spinning a little in circles, and its strength, the director assuming the bias of a narrative tighter on the intimate.
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