Navigating the fine line between dreams and nightmares, Tony Manero plays as a bizarre cross hybridization of Play It Again, Sam (1972) and Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990). When we first meet protagonist Raúl Peralta (Alfredo Castro), the squirrelly, unshaven, under-sized lout of no fixed address has shown up at the studios of Chile TV a week too early and finds himself in a queue with contestants participating in a Chuck Norris look-alike contest. Toting his white polyester suit and black shirt in a garment bag as Christ lugged the cross to Calvary, Raúl numbs his disappointment in a flea pit movie house, watching Saturday Night Fever for the umpteenth time and mouthing the English dialogue back to the screen. The penny ante nature of his character is hinted at when he steals candy from an unmanned cinema concession, leaving audiences wholly unprepared for a scene shortly thereafter in which Raúl comes to the aid of an elderly woman mugged by toughs, sees her home, and then blandly bashes in her skull because he desires her color television.
Raúl will later trade that TV for glass bricks to construct an illuminated dance floor similar to the one in Saturday Night Fever; when the price of glass bricks goes up beyond Raúl's means, he murders again. Played as a somnambulant autocrat, who lords over a family of performers (his girlfriend, her teenage daughter and the young girl's boyfriend) during rehearsals for an amateur cabaret revue, Alfredo Castro etches Raúl as one of cinema's great sociopaths. At times the character barely seems aware of his surroundings but is at heart an amoral opportunist, sapping the happiness of others to take what he needs; Raúl's complete lack of conscience is aptly summed up in a scene in which he appropriates a kid's soccer ball, to which he glues shards of mirror glass to turn into a homemade disco ball. Tony Manero's most telling moment occurs as Raúl follows an unaccompanied male through a vacant lot for the purpose of killing and robbing him... only to have to fall back when his mark is detained, interrogated, and executed in the street by officers of Pinochet's secret police. Raúl will murder again and again before the film is done but with the Santiago citizenry fearing death at the hands of their own government, the predations of a sociopath go entirely unnoticed.
Lorber Films' Region 1 DVD of Tony Manero is respectable but strictly no-frills. The widescreen transfer is letterboxed at 1.85:1 and anamorphically enhanced. The film's color palette seems intentionally muted, making the picture drab throughout but punctuated by flashes of vivid chromatics. (Director Larraín and cinematographer Sergio Armstrong let the actors walk in and out of focus throughout, suggesting a world in which everyone is perpetually on the verge of blacking out.) The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is robust, although a great deal of the film is quiet and soporifically ambient. English subtitles are optional. A recent Region 2 disc from the United Kingdom boasted a 16 minute interview with Pablo Larraín but the Lorber disc offers only an anamorphic original trailer by way of extras.
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by Richard Harland Smith
