Audio transcription

Larraín's nimbly confrontational approach to history was first revealed in his controversial Tony Manero, a gripping and disquieting story of a machismo brute whose unhealthy obsession with disco dancing and John Travolta inspires his unnatural violence. A Stygian vision of late 1970s Santiago set largely at night and in dim interiors, Tony Manero punctuates its literal and thematic darkness with flashes of vicious and unsettling black humor. Tony Manero was co-written by Larraín and the film's star, Alfredo Castro whose uncanny resemblance to Al Pacino echoes the dancer's manic imitation of John Travolta's disco idol and, by deliberate extension, the aggressive embrace of American free-market capitalism adopted by the Pinochet dictatorship.