Austin Film Festival

AUSTIN -- If American moviegoers have plenty of reasons to feel icky about government-sponsored kidnappings and hidden prisons, "Chronicle of an Escape" gives them another good one, by viewing a fact-based Argentinean story through the stylized lens of a horror film. Laced with dread that builds to a thoroughly gripping third act, it should do well with art house audiences who like their history lessons to come with a shot of adrenaline.

Set in the wake of a 1976 military coup in Argentina, the action begins on the floor of a Buenos Aires living room, where a middle-class housewife is being humiliated by armed thugs who believe her son is a leftist. It isn't true: Claudio (Rodrigo De la Serna) is just a soccer player. But that doesn't keep the soldiers from blindfolding him and taking him away for an interrogation that stretches into months-long captivity.

The house where Claudio and other suspects are held is cast in the greens and browns of decay, shot from oppressive angles, and there are moments when the composition and ominously atonal score lead us to expect shocking violence. Not much of that is actually shown, though; director Adrian Caetano would rather depict the aftermath of brutality to the beatings themselves. We see bruises and burn marks; more importantly, we see urgency with which the young men slip their blindfolds on when their keepers approach, terrified of providing any reason for punishment.

We spend an agonizing length of time in this limbo, watching as real leftist plotters provide interrogators with fake leads, and innocent men cower in the hopes that they'll eventually be set free. Finally, after almost exactly a third of a year has passed, Claudio realizes that this hope is for fools. He and the remaining men in his room -- starving and stripped naked, handcuffed to their cots -- decide they're about to be killed, and must at least try to escape.

What remains of the film (despite the title, the escape itself represents a relatively small chunk of the running time) is captivating even without pulling out as many close-call scenes as we expect in this situation, upping the narrative ante instead with highly aestheticized tension. Descending through the rain and scurrying across lawns stark naked, they look like members of a modern dance troupe. Reaching out desperately to strangers as the sun rises, they have no way of telling which face will help and which will call the police.

We know from the introductory titles that some of these men will live to testify, almost a decade later, at the trials of those who abducted them. That does little to change the mood as the film nears its end -- exhilaration mixed with fear, relief tainted by the understanding that the survivors, whether they've done anything to antagonize the government or not, can never return to the lives they had before.

CHRONICLE OF AN ESCAPE
The Weinstein Co.
K&S Prods.
Credits:
Director: Adrian Caetano
Screenwriters: Adrian Caetano, Esteban Student, Julian Loyola
Based on the book by: Claudio Tamburrini
Producers: Oscar Kramer, Hugo Sigman
Director of photography: Julian Apezteguia
Production designers: Jorge Ferrari, Juan Mario Roust
Costume designer: Natalia Alayon, Julio Suarez
Music: Ivan Wyszogrod
Editor: Alberto Ponce
Cast:
Claudio Tamburrini: Rodrigo De la Serna
Huguito: Pablo Echarri
Guillermo Fernandez: Nazareno Casero
El Gallego: Lautaro Delgado
El Vasco: Matias Marmorato
El Tano: Martin Urruty
Lucas: Diego Alonso
Running time -- 104 minutes
No MPAA rating