Post Mortem (2010 film)

Post Mortem
Directed by	Pablo Larraín
Written by	Pablo Larraín
Starring	Alfredo Castro Antonia Zegers Amparo Noguera
Release dates	5 September 2010 (2010-09-05) (Venice)
Running time	98 minutes
Country	Chile
Language	Spanish

Post Mortem is a 2010 Chilean film directed by Pablo Larraín and set during the 1973 military coup that overthrew former President Salvador Allende, inaugurating the 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The film competed in the 67th Venice International Film Festival, Antofagasta Film Festival, Havana Film Festival and the Guadalajara International Film Festival. The film's main character Mario Cornejo is based on a real person with the same name.^[1]

Plot

Mario (Alfredo Castro) is a pathologist's assistant in Santiago who is responsible for noting down the pathologist's commentary during the post mortem. The job has given him a grey, deathlike appearance. Previously, in the days of the military coup, Mario became involved in a love affair with a show dancer, Nancy (Antonia Zegers), who lives across the street with her younger brother David and her father, a communist and Allende supporter. On the morning of September 11, the date of the coup, a military raid takes place in Nancy’s house. Her brother and father are arrested. Mario then begins a frantic search for Nancy, who has disappeared, all the while having to endure pressure from the military who want to hide the real cause of death of the bodies piling up in the morgue.

Critics

The film has been well received by the critics and considered further proof of Larraín’s talent, previously noted in Tony Manero. It received four stars from both The Guardian, which called it “an eerie portrait of a disturbing time”^[2] and Time Out, which praised the “humorously unconventional framings, expressively washed-out colour tones and mysterious low-key performances” that bring together “human comedy and historical tragedy to unique, and surprisingly emotional, effect.”.^[3] The New York Times critic A. O. Scott wrote that “the achievement of Post Mortem is to take rigorous and unsentimental measure of the unpleasantness”.^[4] Post Mortem has also been popular on the Rotten Tomatoes public film reviews website, where it currently (as at February 2013) has an 84% approval rate^[5]