Post Mortem

Directed by Pablo Larrain. Starring Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zegers, Jaime Vadell, Amparo Noguera, Marcelo Alonso, Marcial Tagle Club, IFI, Dublin, 96 min

MORE THAN a few great film- makers have devised their own genre, but many have done so with such rigorous eccentricity as Chilean director Pablo Larrain.

In both Tony Maneroand, now, Post Mortem,Larrain focuses on bitter, slightly mad individuals whose troubling behaviour – all filmed on stock whose filthy hue suggests it has been salvaged from a slagheap – offers an echo of and a commentary on the grubby atrocities that characterised the Pinochet regime.

Despite not having as neat a hook as Tony Manero, the new film is a considerably more lucid and disciplined affair. Looking eerily like a filthier version of John Cale, Alfredo Castro plays Mario, a civil servant charged with transcribing the local coroner's gruesome reports. At night, he visits a rundown (assume the word "rundown" sits before every noun in this review) theatre, where old-school burlesque performers bump and grind for surreptitious onanists.

When one of the dancers, his neighbour, gets sacked, Mario initiates a predictably queasy affair. But there are problems. Her family are communists and, when Pinochet’s coup begins, she is forced to go underground.

As was the case with Tony Manero,the film groans beneath the weight of its many metaphors. Rather than racing along after a plot, viewers spend most of their time trying to read the political message hiding within the narrative palimpsest.

Though the wilful sordidness does occasionally become tiresome, Post Mortemabounds with hugely striking images that effectively convey the moral putrefaction eating away at the state. A fried egg burns horribly in a pan. Bodies pile up in the hospital where the protagonist works. Meanwhile, Mario begins to succumb to his own worst urges.

Filmed in widescreen that reveals every bruise on the colourless sets, Post Mortemrevels in claustrophobia, decay and dysfunction. It's not an altogether pleasant experience. Then again, it's not meant to be.