Tony Manero

Every country's film industry has historical lodes of inspiration. France had the Occupation and Algeria, England the Blitz and Thatcher. Argentina and Chile still mine their periods of military dictatorship. Chile's Pinochet regime had the rawest sources: Tony Manero is one man whose ambition, crimes, hangers-on and local neighbourhood personify that nation's sickness.

Co-written by its lead actor, Alfredo Castro, the dark and gloomy tale focuses on Raul, an impotent middle-aged man determined to win a TV competition for the best lookalike for John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever.

He's playing the part in a local theatre production, and he's obsessed with it. The movie is playing in a nearby cinema and he watches it obsessively, repeating its dialogue and Travolta's arm gestures. Raul is clearly too old for the part, and Castro the actor is more of a lookalike for Roberto Benigni on a deadpan day. The character's obsession doesn't make sense, and the minor characters in his life seem to know that too.

It doesn't help a non-Chilean's appreciation of the scenario to be shown a lead role who seems to lack any normal social morality. Soon after his first appearance in grimy Santiago back streets, Raul rushes to the aid of an old woman who's been mugged. Invited into her home, he kills her, literally with his bare hands, without apparent thought, steals her TV set and shares canned fish meat with her pet cat. Was it meaningful that she'd admired General Pinochet's blue eyes?

He rifles and abandons the still-breathing body of a political activist shot by Pinochet's policemen. He rages with an expressionless face, enlivened only by a plan to build a glass-tiled disco floor for his stage. At the end of the film, when the TV audience only awards him the runner-up prize, the screen fades to black and the audience knows his next moves.

Does Raul represent Pinochet himself, or lower-class Chilean self-delusions, or Chile's national madness? Did Travolta's film character stand for shallow US cultural influences or CIA machinations? It's hard to know. Or care. In this movie, as in Raul's world, there is no justice, no hope and consequently not enough good reasons to watch it.