Tony Manero
18, Key Cities
This is a Chilean film of the kind that is probably only showing at an independent cinema quite far from you until last Thursday but that is life, so get over it. Also, the only Easter alternative seemed to be a big action flick starring Vin Diesel whom I have nothing against personally, but whose performance in The Pacifier I did not admire particularly. (I also felt Arnold Schwarzenegger had rather got in first as the big, tough guy who comically does babysitting in Kindergarten Cop, but that may be just me.)
Anyway, I didn’t see Tony Manero at the cinema, because the distributors were kind enough to lend me a ‘screener’, which is what film people call DVDs, and you will have to continue calling a DVD, not being a film person up there with someone like me. So I watched it at home one evening with my partner who fell asleep 35 minutes into the 98 minutes which, actually, should not be taken as any kind of condemnation. Of course, whenever I attempt to poke him awake, he’ll always deny ever being asleep. ‘You were asleep,’ I’ll tell him. ‘I wasn’t,’ he’ll exclaim. ‘You dropped off,’ I’ll say. ‘I didn’t,’ he’ll exclaim.
But on to business. This is about Raúl (Alfredo Castro), a fifty-something, gaunt, grey-faced man of no obvious employment who is obsessed with Saturday Night Fever and, in particular, the white-suited, hip-swivelling John Travolta character, Tony Manero. On paper, it sounds as if it may be some sort of screwball comedy — the Pinochet years meet the Bee Gees, that kind of thing — but it so isn’t. Seriously, if you are going to rush to make it by last Thursday, don’t do so thinking it’s a screwball comedy, or you will be most sorely aggrieved.
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