The distribution film company Kino Lorber announced this week the theatrical premiere run of the acclaimed Chilean film Post Mortem by Pablo Larraín at Film Forum in New York City. The film will have a two-week engagement, from April 11 - 24.
A companion film to Larraín's critically acclaimed Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem is a macabre, comic drama that begins during the onset of the bloody 1973 Chilean military coup that overthrew democratically elected President Salvador Allende. Alfredo Castro (who starred as the disco-obsessed, white-suited title character in Tony Manero) is a dour coroner's assistant who, while obsessively wooing an erotic dancer at the Bim Bam Bum cabaret, is caught up in a historic, cataclysmic event. His ordinarily dull job is now under military command. As anonymous bodies chaotically pile up in the hallway of the morgue, he is given the task of performing an autopsy on a key government figure.
Once again, Larraín invests his characters with metaphoric undertones, suffusing Santiago with rich period detail and a surreal visual texture that evokes the nightmarish landscape it was rapidly becoming. Post Mortem premiered at the 2010 Venice Film Festival and was featured at the New York Film Festival.
