UNITED STATES
Boston Globe
By Peter Keough GLOBE CORRESPONDENT FEBRUARY 18, 2016
“The Club,” Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s oblique allegory about clerical criminality in the Roman Catholic Church, begins with a familiar quote from Genesis 1:4: “God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness.” Enigmatic, atmospheric, and seductive, the film unfortunately sheds little light on subjects that have too long been hidden in the dark.
The title refers to a group of four priests in a house overlooking the ocean in a Chilean village. At certain angles, the house looks like it belongs on a horror movie poster. Adding to the unwholesome atmosphere, each priest has the disreputable look of a bishop in Luis Buñuel films. As it turns out, each represents a different vice, of which the sexual abuse of minors is only the most obvious. And then there’s Sister Mónica (Antonia Zegers), the creepiest nun on screen since Vanessa Redgrave in “The Devils” (1971), who oversees the inmates and does housework.
Accustomed to isolation, the seedy group unexpectedly receives three visitors in as many days. The first, a new resident, doesn’t hang around very long. The second is a bearded young tramp who calls himself Sandokan (Roberto Farías); he stands outside their door and shouts obscene and terrible accusations. And the third, Father Garcia (Marcelo Alonso), comes from the Church hierarchy with an assignment to investigate the retreat and the clerics who live there.
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