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"Primero resistió la tierra..." (Neruda's Canto General) Torture methods comprise the noxious contraband, exported to South American dictatorships by way of a police chief from Indiana, "just a technician." The staccato opening hopscotches between roadblocks and conspiracies to introduce Montevideo quaked by upheaval, a little symphony of cars braking and taking off and people jumping in and out of them sketches the abduction of the American diplomat (Yves Montand) by Tupamaro urban guerrillas. The main debate, set in a subterranean garage, is between the gringo agent with his back to a wall and the hooded revolutionaries pelting him with evidence of his involvement in the excruciation of dissenting voices. Manhunts, press conferences and parliament combat sessions swirl aboveground, the camera alternating between high-angled panning views of crowds and unsavory close-ups of government jackals. In a nation where CIA-approved industrialists puppeteer the presidency and Keystone Kops rush through the university to stomp speakers, sinister euphemisms become the lingua franca: "Traffic and communications" stand for classes on prisoner electrocution, the formation of death squads is a "political necessity." The dilemma is ultimately between "a cruel and impotent act" and "a sign of weakness," the man with blood on his hands receives a hero's funeral (cf. Shadow of a Doubt). A purposely frustrating Yankee-Go-Home pamphlet by Costa-Gavras, undercutting jazzy urgency with weary melancholia in the face of the multi-headed interventionist chimera. (The severed tentacle promptly grows back, but so do defiant eyes in the crowd.) Chabrol provides a warty riposte (Nada), though the real follow-ups belong to Pinochet the next year and "enhanced interrogation techniques" further down the road. With Renato Salvatori, O.E. Hasse, Jacques Weber, Jean-Luc Bideau, Maurice Teynac, Yvette Etievant, Evangeline Peterson, Nemesio Antúnez, Mario Montilles, and André Falcon.
--- Fernando F. Croce |