The Club

• Strong, very heavy, very good, for anyone with the stomach for a dry story without cheap tricks or breathing room. The worst violences are not explicit; they surface in the everyday atmosphere.

• This refined choice by the director to treat sexuality through the characters' spoken words leads us to construct the imagery in our own way and consequently reach our own conclusions. With rich dialogue, necessary silences, and testimonies, the narrative solidifies, expressing the feelings of resentment and doubt so present and absent in the minds of those priests.

• With The Club, Pablo Larraín delves into a murky place where evil no longer needs a mask: it is there, lurking in the shadows, accepted and perpetuated under the cloak of silence. In this suffocating work, the filmmaker offers neither salvation nor redemption, only a slow moral decay, a chamber drama where faith is merely a smokescreen concealing the unspeakable.

• The direction is masterly, the cinematography sumptuous, with its nuances of whitish overexposure and muted feel. In just a few shots, you can feel how gifted Pablo Larraín is at establishing an atmosphere and telling a story, achieving perfect harmony between the acting of his cast (remarkable), the forceful imagery, the suggestive music (sparse classical or ethereal jazz), and the depth of the emotions at stake.

• Pablo Larraín hits the mark completely in this sadistic, brave, and honest portrait of that darkness that permeates and stains the brightness of a Catholic priesthood that refuses to fully acknowledge its many scandals and keeps concealing its shame behind tainted walls; it is frank, passionate, direct, agonizing, and effective, seizing your senses with dread and fascination as you watch and hear the next outrage from a clergyman who justifies and rationalizes his atrocities.

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