David Farnor | On 04, Dec 2021

Director: Andreas Fontana
Cast: Fabrizio Rongione, Elli Medeiros, Stéphanie Cléau
Certificate: 12

There are feature debuts and there are feature debuts. Andreas Fontana’s Azor is the latter, the kind of first-time film that astounds with its confidence and complexity.

The conspiracy thriller takes us into the wealthy elite of 1980 Argentina, where outsider Yvan (Fabrizio Rongione) arrives from Geneva. A private banker, he is there to replace a colleague who has mysteriously gone missing. Accompanied by his supportive wife, Inés (Stéphanie Cléau), he journeys into the heart of darkness where power, corruption and colonialism all linger in the shadows.

Moving from one client to the next in the shadow of the brutal military dictatorship that recently took over the country, it’s a tour of atmospheric tensions, with the fear sparked by the disappearances occurring throughout the country seeping into the pristine, privileged bubble in which Yvan operates – one of his client’s left-wing daughters has also vanished.

A compelling, slow-burn thriller, at its core is Fabrizio Rongione, whose inscrutable calm (matched by Cléau’s presence, as the couple present the notion that everything is fine and dandy) sets the tone. The result is a patient and absorbing trip down an unsettling river, in which our hero must balance doing the right thing and consciously looking away from the wrong thing. It’s a sinister, glossy tale – one in which the violence lurks chillingly just out of sight.

 

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