Post Mortem

Set during the time of the brutal, CIA-backed right-wing military coup in Chile in 1973, this dark drama stars Alfredo Casta as Mario, a quiet, graying lonely typist in the Santiago city mortuary who is rebounding from a bad love affair when he meets struggling showgirl Nancy (Antonia Zegers), a neighbor who appears to be involved on the fringes of left-wing revolutionary politics. After the pair start seeing each other, the Chilean Army violently seizes power and winds up conscripting the coroner's office into the ghastly bureaucracy of processing and tallying the endless stream of corpses—civilians executed by General Pinochet's death squads—and suddenly, Nancy and her family disappear. The Kubrickian style of director Pablo Larrain results in several long-take sequences of particular power (although the grisliness of occasional autopsy scenes is suggested more via audio effects than visuals). A strong albeit grim film, this is recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a stills gallery and trailers. Bottom line: a small extras package for this interesting drama.] (C. Cassady)