A meta-movie thriller that filters timeless political themes through the cinema and literature of yesteryear, Matadero is an auspicious dramatic feature debut from Argentinean director Santiago Fillol, best known for his screenwriting credits on Oliver Laxe’s well-reviewed Cannes entries Mimosas (2016) and Fire Will Come (2019). The plot hinges on a troubled film shoot in 1970s Argentina, which ended in tragedy and destroyed the career of its cult American director, Jared Reed. An enticing patchwork creation, Reed is an arrogant but charismatic amalgam of old-school alpha-male mavericks like Sam Peckinpah and bratty New Hollywood auteurs such as Hal Ashby, William Friedkin and Francis Ford Coppola. A Locarno Film Festival world premiere, this Argentine-Spanish-French co-production is a little too cerebral in places, but a finely crafted package overall, with pleasing echoes of politically engaged cinematic icons like Costa-Gavras. Further festival play is assured, with art-house bookings likely.
Fillol sets up audience anticipation early by book-ending the story with a time-jump framing device, set more or less in the present day at the long-delayed premiere of a notorious “cursed” film, Matadero, which draws angry street protests outside the cinema. The action then rewinds to Argentina in 1974, the dying days of Juan Perón’s third presidential term, which by then had curdled from vaguely left-leaning populism to full-blooded right-wing authoritarianism with creeping fascist undertones. Hot-headed perfectionist Reed (Julio Perillán) is in the middle of shooting a graphically violent adaptation of El Matadero (The Slaughterhouse) by poet and essayist Esteban Echeverría, an early 19th century short story which is widely considered one of Argentina’s foundational pieces of prose fiction. A savage allegory for the brutal dictatorship that ruled the nation at the time, the story has continued to serves as a caustic commentary on later regimes, including the turbulent period depicted here.
When his cash-squeezed production collapses, a desperate Reed elects to continue shooing guerrilla style, recruiting a ragtag new cast including real slaughterhouse workers alongside amateur actors and student revolutionaries. After the director’s adoring young acolyte Vicenta (Malena Villa) offers the use of her family’s tumbledown ranch as location, the shoot moves deep into the Argentine hinterland. But this makeshift project is soon crackling with tension, as sharp class differences emerge between different cast groups. While the Machiavellian Reed quietly encourages abusive behaviour on set in the name of authentically “brutal” art, a mutiny is brewing between the crew, who insist on giving the film a more urgently left-wing slant instead of making just another “shitty gringo movie”. They ultimately seize the means of production, but only temporarily, and pay a steep price for their radical defiance.
Matadero is an elegantly tailored work, with a measured pace, sombre tone and general mood of low-voltage suspense that feel more suited to a slow-burn art-house costume drama than psychological thriller. This understated approach is mostly effective, but it slightly blunts the dramatic force of the macabre finale. In a dark twist, Reed is recalled to Buenos Aires, where government officials and CIA spooks question his motives for working with dangerous “subversives” in his cast and crew. He makes a Faustian pact to finish his film, which opens the door to treachery and violence. This chilly pay-off pushes the limits of narrative logic, but makes poetic sense as literary allusion, a blood-soaked echo of Echeverría’s original story.
An extended treatise on the ethical and political responsibilities of art and artists, Matadero is engaging and intelligent, albeit a little dry in places. Fillol prods at some enjoyably juicy themes – cultural colonialism, outsider appropriation of other people’s class struggles, the awkward unease felt by some bourgeois leftists in the presence of actual proletarian workers , and so on – but he often strains to dramatise these talking points beyond stilted dialogue exchanges. The director insists he did not make a “thesis film”, but this ruminative meta-movie certainly feels animated more by its philosophical ideas than its fairly schematic characters. All the same, there is plenty to savour here, from sharp-eyed critique of power and privilege to lyrical cinematography, strong use of sound design, potently ominous music and lovingly rendered homages to 1970s cinema.
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (Concorso Cineasti del Presente)
Cast: Julio Perillán, Malena Villa, Ailín Salas, Rafael Federman, Lina Gorbaneva, Ernestina Gatti, David Szechtman, Gustavo Javier Rodríguez
Director: Santiago Fillol
Screenplay: Santiago Fillol, Edgadro Dobry, Lucas Vermal
Producers: Fernando Molnar, Nicolás Avruj
Cinematography: Mauro Herce
Editing: Cristóbal Fernández
Music: Cristóbal Fernández, Gerard Gil
Art director: Ana Cambre
Production companies: Magoya Films (Argentina), El Viaje Films (Spain), 4A4 Productions (France), Nina Produccions (Spain), Prisma Cine (Argentina)
World sales: Alief
In Spanish
106 minutes
