A home for errant priests with troubling pasts comes under fire from within in this eeiry, thought-provoking film from acclaimed Chilean director Pablo Larraín.
In his earlier films Tony Manero, Post Mortem, and the Oscar-nominated film No, Larraín explored the legacy of the Pinochet regime to great effect. Now, he shifts his gaze to the Catholic Church with this morally complex study of personal redemption and institutional responsibility. On the edge of a weather-beaten coastal town, in a house of muted atonement, four disgraced priests live in Church-imposed isolation. Ostensibly placed there to reflect on their transgressions, the men instead fill their days drinking, watching reality TV, and training their greyhound to compete in local dog races. When a fifth priest is assigned to the house, disrupting their carefully-maintained routine with disturbing reminders of the past, a moment of panic signals the end of their comfortable, but precarious purgatory. As the soundtrack swells with the music of composer Arvo Pärt and cinematographer Sergio Armstrong fills the screen with strong, stark imagery, Larraín delves deeply into the tension that results when questions of troubled spirituality and self-rationalizations collide. For his efforts, he and his quietly intense film were awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
DIRECTOR: Pablo Larraín CAST: Alfredo Castro,Roberto Farías, Antonia Zegers, Jaime Vadell, Alejandro Goic, Alejandro Sieveking, Marcelo Alonso, José Soza, Francisco Reyes LANGUAGE: Spanish COUNTRY: Chile YEAR: 2015 LENGTH: 98 min
