El clan, one of the most anticipated Argentine releases of the year, is a study in vileness
One of the most anticipated local releases of the year, El Clan is based on the story of the Puccios, a peculiar family that may surely have a next-door feel while harbouring unspeakable secrets of the sinister kind. And that’s an understatement.
The film is proudly running in the official competition of the upcoming Venice Film Festival, alongside the new films by Marco Bellochio, Atom Egoyan, Alexander Sokurov, and Amos Gitai, among others.
Both a layered character study and a precise crime chronicle, El Clan (The Clan) explores the actions of a family of human monsters, set against the background of the last military dictatorship.
“El Clan focuses on a nefarious family against the backdrop of a military dictatorship. It’s hell within hell itself. Perfect material for a dark and original thriller,” said Agustín Almodóvar, co-producer with his brother Pedro and their company El deseo — and alongside Argentine companies K&S and La Matanza Cine — of the latest film by renowned filmmaker Pablo Trapero.
This well-to-do family from the posh suburbs of San Isidro during the 1980s ran a very lucrative and brutal business. On the one hand, the Puccios were good all Catholics who went to mass on Sunday, won the approval of their friends and neighbours, and lead a seemingly normal life. Alejandro Puccio, the eldest son, was a remarkable rugby player and a handsome charmer. All in all, they were a respected family that everyone held dear.
At the same time, the Puccios would kidnap wealthy businessman or their relatives — sometimes even Alejandro’s own friends — hold them in their house for ransom and then murder them instead of letting them go after their ransoms were paid. Talk about duality.
This is the first time in 17 years that an Argentine film is featured in the Golden Lion competition — the last one was Fernando “Pino” Solanas’s La nube. It’s not the first time for Trapero, who, back in 1999, presented his debut feature Mundo grúa (Crane World) and won the Critics’ Week Prize. In 2004, his Familia rodante (Rolling Family) was featured in the Orizzonti section. Trapero also sat on the jury in 2012.
In a really striking performance filled with nuances, with a masterful command of the subtlest gestures, popular TV, theatre and cinema actor Guillermo Francella plays the lead as patriarch Arquímedes Puccio, an icy man with a hell of a temper, almost completely unaffectionate and very stern. A man who felt neither guilt nor remorse for his crimes and, in fact, not once admitted to having killed any of his victims.
This is the type of man who would constantly wash his home’s sidewalk in a seemingly casual manner, but with a hidden agenda: he’d do it to find out if the yelling of the kidnapped victims coming from his house — he would lock them in a bathroom — could in fact be heard by passers-by. And Francella embodies his traits just as well, if not better, as when he played an alcoholic assistant in a police investigation in Juan José Campanella’s Oscar winning film El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes).
Young singer and actor Peter Lanzani makes his film debut as Alejandro, the eldest son of the clan, and delivers a performance that may not be as nuanced as Francella’s but is yet convincing and well-tuned enough to deliver a character with a dark soul, a good looking façade, and a perverse relationship with a heinous father. Although father and son were the actual perpetrators of the crimes, the mother, two daughters and two other brothers were, to some extent, accomplices — just like the retired colonel Rodolfo Victoriano Franco and two other men.
First, during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, Arquímedes Puccio was a member of the SIDE, the Triple A, and provided “room and board” for those disappeared by the military. But when the military left the government and democracy returned, Puccio could no longer claim the immunity he had enjoyed before. So he started “working on his own” and targeted his future victims, that is to say, rugby player Ricardo Manoukian, engineer Eduardo Aulet, businessman Emilio Naum, and businesswoman Nélida Bollini de Prado. The woman was the only survivor.
El Clan accomplishes several things at once. First, it’s an accurate metaphor for the evil of those obscure years, with one family and their demons closely connected to those of the infamous military dictatorship. Just like the Puccios held their victims in a bathroom and passers-by didn’t know what was going on — or at least pretended they didn’t, or most likely both — the military held illegally detained prisoners in clandestine centres and society at large didn’t know what was going on — or didn’t want to know, or most likely both. In many ways, it’s impossible to think of the Puccios without thinking of the military dictatorship.
Secondly, Trapero casts a very comprehensive gaze upon the duality of this family. It would have been very easy to portray them as out-of-these-world monsters, but it wouldn’t have been true. The nature of the Puccios was far more complex that what could be seen at first sight, and the switching between their family life and their criminal one is meticulously expressed in seemingly minor signs. You have to remember that the evil is in the details.
And thirdly, while El Clan is a solid thriller, you can also see it as a horror feature, one where the monster lurks behind a familiar and friendly façade. A study in what sinister is all about, if you will.
El Clan (Argentina, 2015). Written and directed by Pablo Trapero. With Guillermo Francella, Peter Lanzani, Lili Popovich, Gastón Cocchiarale, Franco Masini, Giselle Motta. Cinematography: Julián Apezteguía. Editing: Pablo Trapero, Alejandro Carrillo Penovi (SAE). Running time: 108 minutes.
