markgordonpalmer TONY MANERO (2008/ Chile - directed by Pablo Larrain) *SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW* Raul is a man just beyond middle-aged; a little bit past his prime. Not very good at anything. Except maybe dancing. Trouble is, Raul's knees aren't too happy these days about the kind of disco dance moves they are forced to take the strain of. But that's not going to stop Raul from doing what he now knows he was born to do - dance the disco! Meet Raul Peralta - a man looking for a way to escape from a life where all he has to rely on is mimicking the John Travolta role of iconic dancing king Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. For a living. Or for a chance of a living. It's a shot at stardom, doomed to fail, but what else is there to rely on? The dark days of the Pinochet dictatorship hang heavy in daily life all around him; his heart is blackened, and the soot falls heavy on the white suit he wears to the dance class. But the dancefloor holds more hope than any of the the streets this man walks down, any of the bedrooms he finds himself stumbling into.Raul spends all he can on cheap and chipped glass tiles to make a pathetic little disco dancefloor to impress his fellow dancers with; a group of wide-eyed and hope-drained followers who see the white suit Raul wears as evidence of freedom; of a better life. Raul's love life is equally bleak; though he does at least have one, and seeks occasional company in the arms of his dull-eyed but willing girlfriend and later in the arms and untidy bed of his girlfriend's daughter, a girl conspiring against the Pinochet regime but ultimately doomed to lose everything in every way possible. Raul is seen walking the perma-strutting daughter through the living room to the bedroom after a few too many drinks; right past her watching friends and right in front of his so sad-eyed but strangely passive girlfriend, in a quite unsettling and shocking scene.Raul's obsession with the film Saturday Night Fever, playing daily at the local picturehouse, is absolute. It's freedom and escape. But in the end; it's a curse and a slippery slope into total immorality. In real life, in Raul's reality - old women get mugged; projectionists get beaten to a pulp when they play (horror of horrors) the film Grease, where Travolta is no longer the harder-edged Tony Manero character, but a character all bright and breezy and wearing a different outfit, with different dance moves.Raul has devoted too many days of his life to practising the Manero dance moves; to wearing the exact same outfits; into trying to win the Tony Manero of Chile competition, to stop now. Trouble is - he's not a very good Tony Manero. He's more Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon or Scarface; more Tony Montana than Manero. In the original Saturday Night Fever, a girlfriend of Travolta's character compares him to Pacino after kissing him on the dancefoor: "Ohh, I just kissed Al Pacino" she croons - a nice touch and neat link to the original movie.Raul can dance - but not that well. He slips and stumbles at key moves; his knee giving way. The lingering camera doesn't zoom in on any reaction when the inevitable, literal fall - or slip from assumed perfection, comes. Raul carries on with the dance - and the camera does too. In a way, the camera tries to hide what Raul is also hiding; as if we may not notice. But we do. This is masterly direction from Pablo Larrain. In the last reel there's a chance it may not all end in absolute failure for Raul. A decision in the final stages of the dance competition could go either way, with just two contenders up for the crown at the last dance saloon -could Raul actually win? Is he the 'new best Tony Manero impersonator' in Chile? He will either come first or second. But a runner-up is just another nobody. When asked what his profession is at the dance contest, Raul looks puzzled: "This" he replies, without seeing the irony.Raul may do something unexpected and nasty to the suit of a rival (in a scene that is really quite disgusting and puts to bed any hope that Raul isn't as depraved as he may at first appear), but it's his own white disco suit that is forever ruined; that will forever be missing the right number of buttons to make him a true Manero impersonator - a suit that is already splashed with the blood of the innocent.The performance of Alfredo Castro as Raul is heart-wrenching, absolute and intense. It's real, without the barriers of a performance to distract; he is Raul, in the same way he will never be Tony Manero.This remains a film that refutes the beauty and passion in hardship; denies its existence; embraces the blackest humour and lives the darkest of days. There's no bad boy made good moral to be found here. No pot of gold or winning ticket at the end of this rainbow; this great glass elevator is chipped and broken and going nowhere.If you thought the real Tony Manero had it bad, you ain't seen nothing yet! by ~ Mark Gordon Palmer

johnnyboyz If the name Tony Manero means anything to anyone at all, then it will be because of a rather famous breakthrough role on behalf of a certain American actor named John Travolta, whose performance as said character in 1977's Saturday Night Fever saw him propelled into the acting limelight as this fascinating negotiator of the dance floor and charismatic presence when dialogue and exchange was required. With the release of this, a hard boiled Chilean drama directed by a certain Pablo Larraín and arriving with it the title of Tony Manero, the name threatens to take on a new found sense of identity or initial 'link' with audiences; much like the musical number "Singing in the Rain" may have done with some once Kubrick got his hands on it. Very few films that I can recall have had the ability to have you symptomatically tapping your feet at a catchy tune accompanying the somewhat elated feeling brought about by the grace of an on screen dance performance, whilst forcing you to watch proceedings through the spindly cracks that formulate out of having all of your fingers pressed together due to not really being able to watch. This Chilean film about idolisation and the impact of Western culture on foreign lands is one of them; a fascinating, a positively nihilist, take on the daring to dream whilst under a proverbial strain and is a shattering experience.For the most part, the film plays out like this really stripped down; really rather grotty look at poor Chileans living under the tyranny of the then Pinochet-led government of the early 1980s, that just so happens to encompass a bi-polar man who's on the cusp of psychopathy and has an obsession for Travolta's aforementioned character. At the core of it is lead Raúl Peralta (Castro); a man operating within certain circles encompassing family members and contacts down at the oft-frequented local dancing club, but a man with a dangerous obsession of both the titular character of years gone by and the film from whence he comes. Peralta cuts a worn, ominous figure; a man with the mannerisms and understated sense of both threat and anger to that of Travis Bickle, an accent with a chiselled complexion plus general sense of menace to that of Pacino's Scarface anti-hero lead Tony Montana. A peek into his mind reveals the uncontrollable desire to lash out at those unsuspecting and vulnerable, the beating to death of an elderly woman, whose company he briefly shares whilst in her home, giving way to an unfathomable sense of anguish seeing him eventually take measures to make sure that her now orphaned pet cat will not remain alone and therefore starve.Peralta's dream is to dance professionally, this unfriendly; sleazy; whore dwelling lowlife whom, at one point, loots the body of a dead man because it benefits him, desires to branch off and find success within a practice often attributed with characteristics of prouesse, elegance and splendor. Thinking he's ready for the challenge, we observe him in the opening scenes attend a televised dance competition at a studio which sees him not only turn up on the incorrect date alluding to more dangerous issues there, but completely go against rules and regulation that are established upon his arrival by heading on in and snooping around anyway, thus paying sly hint to his inability to see things any other which way but normally.Peralta's sometimes ventures to the cinema, a local picture house showing that of John Badham's then relatively recent Saturday Night Fever to sparse audiences complete with subtitles. He breezes into the various showings at whatever time he wishes; usually just in time to catch one of the many disco-set scenes thus creating the illusion of actually walking into a disco proper ready to strut one's moves thus nicely syncing up with that of the on screen characters. A scholar of the film, Peralta is able to quote large chunks of dialogue in a stone faced and mechanical fashion; sitting there acting out the passages of play filling in for Travolta's dialogue and getting caught up in a film all about the distinction between characters both inside and outside of the dance hall, much in the same way Tony Manero goes on to explore its own lead's predicament both within his fantasy of wanting to dance and playing Travolta's part, as well as that of his true to life surroundings.The film pays homage to that notion of Travolta's very specific character from that very specific 1977 film being such a mover and such the focal point he was; Manero was a man at the centre of everybody's diegetic attention, an attention which matched up with that of the audience's, somebody whom the camera went out of its way to embrace or to incorporate whilst they danced to imbue proceedings with a sense of objectification. Peralta's gradual obsession with Manero might be read into as being born out of this, his utilisation of dance as a means of escaping the dishevelled living conditions he inhabits going in perfect tandem with that of Manero's own use of the dance hall as a place he can become somebody else; the injustice which later befalls him an injustice essentially something born out of the lack of democratic procedure in regards to voting, something reflective in the real Chile where politics and freedom and such do not link up so easily. The film's chugs through to a disturbing final shot, a composition hinting at Peralta's now newfound sense of coming to terms with the nature of his world of escape merely an extension of the unfair reality he sought to get away from; on the other hand, a shot alluding as much to a man already beneath the line of sanity so much so that he really doesn't care either way. Larraín's hard hitting drama makes for fantastic watching; the results of which are some morbid, gripping viewing.

gregking4 A chilling study in obsession and violence, set against the backdrop of Pinochet's totalitarian Chile in the late '70's. Raul (Alfredo Castro) is a pathological serial killer and amoral petty thief who is obsessed with John Travolta's character from the movie Saturday Night Fever. He watches the film daily and mouths the dialogue, and even tries to copy his mannerisms. As an homage to the film he is also mounting a dance routine in the small cantina where he works. Raul is the type who sees something he wants and takes it by any means possible, whether it be a colour TV or even his girl friend's sexually precocious daughter. He enters a TV competition to find Chile's Tony Manero lookalike, and takes care of one of his rivals in typically nasty fashion. Dressed in his gaudy white suit, Raul looks less like John Travolta and more like a seedy Al Pacino circa Scarface. But his selfish obsession towards these superficial distractions and his willingness to live in an unrealistic fantasy world blind him to the very real perils of Chile, where death squads roam the streets and plains clothes police snatch people off the streets. Raul is a repellent character, and Castro, who co-wrote the film with director Pablo Larrain, makes no attempt to garner sympathy for him. Larrain's direction is restrained and understated, which makes the grim reality of Raul's environment somehow seem more menacing.

Gil O'Brien I really liked this movie. I wish there was a more solid ending, but it was acceptable. Very good use of using the fascist regime weaving in and out of the story. As many critics have already made us aware, the insane actions performed to satisfy an insane goal by the title character mirror those of the Chilean regime during the same period. Loved the documentary style of film-making. Loved the flawless depiction of a poor, but barely scraping by city. I would say the only thing I would have liked to have seen was some sort of closure to the story. I'm only human. Anyway, awesome otherwise. TONY MANERO should go down as an Indie Classic.