In the 18th century, Claude Pinoche, a royalist French soldier, is discovered to be a vampire and survives an attempt to kill him. Witnessing the French Revolution and the execution of Marie Antoinette, he fakes his death and flees abroad, participating in the suppression of revolutionary upheavals over the next two centuries. Eventually, he ends up in Chile in 1935 and joins the Chilean Army under the name Augusto Pinochet. Rising to become a general, he overthrows the socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973 and becomes the country's dictator, demanding that he be addressed as "The Count" by his family. When authorities begin investigating his ill-gotten wealth and human rights abuses after he leaves office, he fakes his death again and retires to a remote farm.
After 250 years of existence, he gradually loses his will to live, worrying his wife Lucía, and his long-time butler, Fyodor, a white Russian whom Pinochet bit and turned into a vampire. Fyodor takes up Augusto's military uniform and goes on a gruesome killing spree to find and consume human hearts in Santiago. Thinking that their father was responsible and anxious to receive their inheritance, the Pinochet children hire a nun, Carmen, to exorcise and kill Augusto under the guise of auditing the family's wealth, and go to the farm, followed by Carmen, who charms Augusto with her fluency in French. Augusto later discovers that Fyodor is having an affair with Lucía but tolerates it as he has grown tired of her. Carmen extensively interviews the household over their legal troubles and finances, assembling a dossier which she hides in her room.
Carmen eventually reveals her true identity as a nun to Augusto and tries to exorcise him, but is overwhelmed by his presence and ends up having sexual intercourse with him, allowing him to transform her into a vampire. This prompts the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, who is revealed to be Claude's mother, having abandoned him at an orphanage at birth after she was raped and bitten by a strigoi.
Margaret, jealous of Carmen's claims to Augusto's love, orders her son to kill her. Instead, Augusto shows off his wealth to Carmen, whereupon Carmen reveals that she has been feigning her attraction to him, and that her becoming a vampire was part of her mission on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church to infiltrate the Pinochets and gather information on their corrupt dealings. As she flees, she is captured and guillotined by Fyodor, who burns her dossier. Fyodor, Lucía, and the Pinochet children then attempt to kill Augusto and Margaret to gain their inheritance, but Augusto kills Lucía by driving a stake through her heart and beheads Fyodor with a saw.
The children are left to salvage what they could of the farm. As they leave, a group of nuns arrives to look over the now emptied property. Augusto and Margaret rejuvenate themselves with vampire hearts and leave to start a new life. Augusto, now a boy, chooses to remain in Chile, saying more leftists will emerge.
Principal photography began on June 24, 2022.[8][9]
Release
El Conde premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on 31 August 2023.[10][11] It received a limited theatrical release on September 7, 2023, in Chile and Argentina.[12][13] It received a limited theatrical release in the US on September 8, 2023,[14] before it began streaming worldwide on September 15, 2023 on Netflix.[15]
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, El Conde holds an approval rating of 82%, based on 115 critic reviews with an average rating of 7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A darkly delirious satire rooted in real-life horror, El Conde finds Pablo Larraín revisiting familiar themes without losing their provocative power."[16] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[17]
Lindsey Bahr of AP News wrote "El Conde might stretch its gimmicky premise a little past its welcome, but it is an intoxicating, overwhelming and gruesome cinematic experience nonetheless."[18]
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