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Chile, 1972: Salvador Allende’s socialist regime is in peril as General Pinochet’s CIA-backed army sends the tanks in, yet for a lowly, lonely mortician’s assistant the main thing on his mind is the alluring bourgeois femme fatale who lives across the road and works as an exotic dancer in a seedy revue. Welcome to the discomfiting work of director Pablo Larrain and his quite unconventional leading man Alfredo Castro, teaming up again after Tony Manero (the saga of a Santiago killer obsessed by Saturday Night Fever) for this equally unsettling tale of twisted longing and disturbing moral myopia. As ever, Larrain’s storytelling style is deadpan and non-judgmental, building an immersive sense of time and place as his self-involved protagonist faces testing choices – will his jealousy-fuelled pursuit of faded aristocrat Nancy (Antonia Zegers) blindside him to the sweeping changes afoot in his nation? Bitter, provocative, and hypnotically compelling, this is dark comedy taken right to the edge by a unique South American filmmaker. (Notes to by Trevor Johnston).