Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrains alarming
Tony Manero is named not for its protagonist but rather his ego-ideal, John Travoltas character in
Saturday Night Fever. The film, set in the dark days of the Pinochet regime, is a study of a solitary daydreamer in which an unsmiling 50-ish madman nurtures fanatical Bee Geesfueled fantasies of disco glory. Raúl Peralta (played with total focus by stage actor Alfredo Castro) attends his favorite movie as if it were Sunday mass. He sometimes brings along his talismanic white suit as though it too needed to study Travoltas moves. Raúl not only internalizes Tonys version of the American Dream, but he memorizes Tonys lines for use in the four-actor version of
Saturday Night Fever hes staging in a grungy Santiago cantina. Raúls obsession is complemented by a total disinterest in any human contact. Indifferent to Pinochets shabby police state, this ferret-like wannabe stops at nothing in his quest to be Chiles Tony Manero. He violently appropriates an elderly ladys color TV, spontaneously rips up the cantina to create space for a glass-tile floor, runs amok when he discovers that the theater he frequents has replaced
Saturday Night Fever with
Grease, and, most grotesquely, befouls a rival impersonators white suit. Feasting on this bizarre fascist posturing, Larrain suggests that, with his sordid charisma, Raúl is a miniature Pinochet reproducing the brutality of the state in his willingness to steal, exploit, betray, and kill in the service of a fantasy.
Tony Manero plays at 8 tonight at Cinema Paradiso (503 SE Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale); visit fliff.com. It plays at 2 p.m. at Lake Worth Playhouse (713 Lake Ave., Lake Worth), with more showings available until August 26; visit lakeworthplayhouse.org.
Mon., Aug. 24, 3 p.m., 2009