Dir: Pablo Larraín, 2016, Chile, 107 mins, Cert: 15
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Sun 30 April 2017 // 18:00
*
Tue 2 May 2017 // 20:00
Tickets: £5 (full) / £4 (concession / * cheap night)
Hot off the heels of mainstream success Jackie, Chilean director Pablo Larraín's (The Club, No) returns to our screen with an altogether looser interpretation of the biopic genre, this time exploring the life of his compatriot and 20th century Communist poet-politician, Pablo Neruda.
Often times feeling more like a noir or campy chase thriller than a biopic, Larraín's film depicts Neruda (Luis Gnecco) alternately hiding and fleeing from ambitious police inspector and fascistic government stooge, Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael Garcia Bernal).
The result is an engrossing caper that moves between conversations and action setpieces with ease. Taking the events of the poet's escapade to be interpreted and reimagined, rather than minutely detailed, Larraín's film casts its two subjects as key players in an elaborately-staged literary retelling, as if they were the subject of one of Neruda's epic poems themselves. Their characters and stories are constructed, dissolved, and reframed, and before long, neither is certain who is really chasing who...
Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office