UNITED STATES
New York Times
By A. O. SCOTT
FEB. 4, 2016
Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight,” deservedly nominated for a bunch of Oscars, examines evil from the outside, shining a beam of journalistic illumination at the abuse and corruption that festered within the Roman Catholic hierarchy for decades. “The Club,” the latest feature from the Chilean writer-director Pablo Larraín, looks at the same issue from the inside out, bringing the viewer into an uncomfortable state of intimacy with the perpetrators of hideous crimes.
Not that the four men and one woman at the center of this clammy, unsettling film regard themselves that way, or look that way to their neighbors. The five of them live in a neat, yellow-painted house in a small coastal town, where they share meals and strolls along the beach and devote themselves to training their beloved racing dog. His winnings pad the household budget, and while their lives are hardly opulent, the members of this group of outcasts seem to enjoy a measure of peace.
That changes when a new priest joins the club. Almost as soon as he arrives, a disturbed, raggedly dressed man who calls himself Sandokan (Roberto Farías) shows up outside the house and relates, at the top of his lungs and in pornographic detail, a story of sexual abuse. Violence ensues, and in its aftermath an official from the Vatican — a Jesuit named Father García (Marcelo Alonso) — hangs around to investigate and to bring his disgraced colleagues into line.
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