Azor (2021) User Reviews

An elegant, discreet and disturbing descent into hell

[danybur · 8/10 · 23 November 2021]

Summary:

The film tackles a theme rarely used by the cinema: the relationship of private banks with the military, businessmen, diplomats and officials of the last Argentine civil-military dictatorship. And he does it as a kind of thriller and noir (although it exceeds them) that portrays the elegant and above all discreet descent into hell of a Swiss banker who must frequent these estates in the early 1980s in Argentina. And the result is downright disturbing.

Review:

Ivan de Wiel, a private banker from Geneva (Fabrizio Rongione), arrives in Buenos Aires in the early 1980s with his wife Inés (Stéphanie Cléau) because they have lost contact with the partner in charge of the previous region, Kies, about whom they circulate various rumors. His role is to reconnect with the client portfolio and discreetly find out what happened to Kies to clear those rumors.

And what customers! De Wiel will undertake a tour that will include various members, houses and circles of the Buenos Aires upper class (with soldiers, prelates, landowners with stud farms, their wives and lawyers and some upstart), diplomatic personnel and some officials, in a kind of thriller and detective noir (although the film exceeds them), in the context of the military dictatorship.

The banker is faced with a framework in which at first it is difficult for him to position himself. He will act as an explorer in an elegant jungle where he must meet some sinister characters and a plot of things not said or half said, going down a descent into hell with "discretion as strategy" (in the words of its director), where the main objective will be to recover or preserve clients and businesses and where the title of the film, an expression of a Swiss dialect, will end up acquiring its full meaning.

The young Swiss director Andreas Fontana (who later trained in Buenos Aires) performs in his debut film a great reconstruction of the period (in every sense) in terms of the places that the protagonist must frequent, beginning with that Swiss marriage whom he hosts in the Plaza Hotel (and of course, not the Sheraton, a new rich Americans hotel) and tackles a topic rarely seen in the cinema: the relationship between private banks and the military, businessmen and officials of the last Argentine civic-military dictatorship. The film paints at the same time a portrait of this upper class in love with his possessions and proud of his silly Francophilia. At the same time, he makes powerful use of what is not shown, of "blind spots", of the off-field, resources that are very significant in times and contexts such as those he portrays.

And the result is downright disturbing.

Understated Thriller

[melcher-2001 · 7/10 · 4 January 2022]

The title, 'Azor' is translated as a code for, 'Be quiet'. The main characters rarely venture beyond the act of listening as they navigate through a maze of pretense and subterfuge that covers a world of arrogance, oppression and evil.

Fabrizio Rongione and Stephanie Cleau as the husband and wife strategize their pathway among the principals of a financial and political junta. Horrible crimes have been committed and an atmosphere of fear laps at the edges of every conversation. The particulars are never mentioned and studiously avoided. In the end we see that everyone who plays a part is fully complicit in a ruthless pursuit of power and greed.

A period piece that visually could have been made in the period that it portrays, the movie drifts from scene to scene, conversation and conversation in what feels like a dream. What is real is never spoken and everything important is hidden behind a curtain of appearance and language.

Very engaging and unique

[carlos-pires · 8/10 · 12 September 2021]

Very engaging slow-burner that somehow never bursts into flame. The only flaw I find in this movie, is that the ending seems not to have been given too much thought.

But it presents a very unique quality: a perfect depiction of tension. There is tension everywhere, in every scene, in every character, throughout the whole movie. The masterfully crafted soundtrack does a major contribution there. This is a movie where there is no display of action. Every thing is as silent as the atrocities that we know for a fact were being committed while we watch these low voice conversations between wealthy people, bankers, clergy, all the way to the final "deal with the devil" moment.

Cool. Cool and discreet.

[mpaj9 · 7/10 · 14 December 2021]

I liked this film, it was very engaging and affecting - I very much felt like I was descending into something, entering lions dens and observing intensely whilst doing so.

The ending was very abrupt, I thought there was more to go! But in reflection I liked how it ended.

scenes are done really good but the story is really slow and hard to understand what they are really going

[momomojojo · 6/10 · 27 June 2022]

Love the 80's style of movie in a new jacket, but making it nothing short as it maybe has the old camera style of sceneiers even the actors behave. The amount of actors playing is alot even though not all actors are high quality but they do lean towards a natural playing instead of reading the script. Many blank sceniers that feel empty but they hold a very delicated information, what is not much but do help the story building.

The acting is done nicely, the main player is good, the rest could step a bit more up.

They drag a lot in the movie and hard to follow where they want to go with the movie. Even though we know a bit how it will go as audience, but so many options.

The scenes are not low budget made including the clothing and everything around it pulls you really back to the 80's of Argentina. Perfect done. I do need to say they limited the amount of variables like people and decoration, to not misstep because during the pool party I have the feeling they kinda fell in the water. Feeling C level quality.

The camera work is basic also the transaction of scenes, this seems more like the 90's where they highlight so much as if the audience is stupid and every scene feels like cut out and modified and placed back into the movie again.

Ever wonder what private banking is really all about? This fascinating film makes it clearer than you might like

[Mengedegna · 9/10 · 14 September 2021]

This remarkable Argentine-Swiss coproduction is set in the early years of the Argentine rule-by-junta. The topic, though, is broader: the intersection of élite cupidity and brutal politics worldwide, cloaked under a veneer of high-class gentility and, of course, excruciatingly extreme discretion. The horrors endemic to the place and time in which the film is set are rendered obliquely and allusively, and all the more powerfully for that.

The film is wonderfully cast. Every character, down to the smallest non-speaking cameo, conveys worlds of meaning, often in a single frame. Most striking of all is a Catholic Monsignor who is brilliantly parodied while he acts as a searingly sinister fulcrum, lifting part of the veil that hangs over the plot, putting me in mind of the terrifying Grand Inquisitor in Verdi's opera "Don Carlos" who pushes Philip II of Spain to kill his rebellious son just as, in order to save the world, "God sacrificed his own". This sequence, set during a small gathering in one of the inner sanctums of the junta élite, tells you more about what was then going on in Argentina than could more explicit scenes set in a torture chamber or execution field, while at the same time making clear what the banker is really there to do, and what the film is really about.

The gentility and costly need for constant secretiveness (a lesson is even given in a secret argot used by Geneva bankers, including the meaning of "azor") are chillingly conveyed by the lead couple, played by Fabrizio Rongione and Stéphanie Cléau. He perfectly personifies the suave, ultra buttoned-down Swiss private banker, to the manor born, providing a master class in understated movie acting, conveying reactions with just the subtlest twitch of an eyelid or a small corner of his mouth. Her character is highly intelligent, ambitious, icily disciplined, both a judgmental antagonist and a tremendous resource for him, sussing out situations in which she is, even more (you sense) than usual in the macho world of the Argentine ruling classes (old and new), relegated to the sidelines, to the point of being more or less politely dismissed whenever serious business is to be discussed. (At one point, he is told to get rid of her prior to a key meeting: "no women".) She is perforce devoted to her husband yet bitter at the role she must play. Her greatest line, already widely quoted in reviews, comes when she is told by a tough-as-nails Argentine matriarch that she can see that "your husband loves you very much" (which is actually, you assume, a leading question), and Cléau, still smooth and icy but with just the subtlest flash of anger, responds., "Yes, he and I are but a single person. [Perfectly-timed pause.} And that person is him".

The film is in French and Spanish, with many of the Argentine characters (quite credibly, given their social standing) completely at home in French, while Rongione seems to have more than serviceable (though not perfect) Spanish. (Cléau seems to have almost none, which, if anything, serves to enhance the acuity of her observations.) The dialogue shifts constantly between the two languages, often in midsentence, none of which is flagged in the English subtitles even though, like every cue in this subtlest of movies, each shift conveys meaning.

Similarly, the film brings together two different, but intertwined and indeed interdependent, worlds. One is that of élites everywhere, but in this case of a post-putsch Latin American country among whom all are living in terror, though of what, or of whom, differs according to the person's social or political standing. The other is that of global private bankers, in this case Swiss, who provide vital services by protecting and processing wealth, whether gained by plunder by the current holders of power or inherited by established élites, presumably from plunder by their ancestors. Both worlds are scary, and their scariness is brilliantly conveyed, which is what makes this film so compelling. Though some of the in-jokes will be most amusing to Swiss viewers (outsiders will not necessarily spot the full contempt conveyed when one suave upper-class Swiss tells another that a third colleague is "from Zug"), the key structural role played by bankers worldwide in their dealings with the politically powerful and with the very rich, and the ways they help engineer mutations from one category to the other, could not be made clearer.

Without resorting to spoilers, I think it can be said that what's most striking about the film's final sequence is the sudden banality of the message it appears to convey. After all that intrigue and complexity, you wonder, it this really what it was all about? And the film's answer appears to be, "Well, of course, what did you think?"

Kinejin

[kinejin · 7/10 · 31 May 2022]

Intriguing, slow-burner of a film with excellent performances and controlled direction. Very slowly and deliberately paced, the film captures the period ambiance effectively -- yet still feels long for its 100-minute runtime. Without giving anything of importance away, this film could be described as the "Apocalypse Now" of Swiss banking films -- including a tense boat ride up a jungle river to meet a military leader. Not a great film, but very good, and the similarities to Coppola's previously mentioned masterpiece -- whether intentional or not -- enhance its watchability.

Intriguing Film That Has Stayed With Me

[jrd_73 · 9/10 · 22 July 2023]

I saw Azor a week ago. I have been thinking about it ever since.

The word "Azor" as used here is a French expression that means to remain quiet, to play one's cards close to the chest. On the surface, the film looks like a thriller, maybe something that Costa-Gavras might have made. However, like its title, the film is too quiet to be called a thriller.

In 1980, a Genevan private banker arrives in Argentina to do business. He is replacing a colleague who has a controversial reputation with the locals. In fact, there is some question about where this predecessor is currently, most believing that he has returned to Geneva. The banker, Yvan, and his wife, Ines, spend several days in the country trying to woo various clients, but the country's politics keep coming up. One of the clients (excellently played by Juan Trench) is grieving the disappearance of his daughter, who was involved in a political group. Her fate looks dire, but the client hangs on to hope.

Throughout all of this, Yvan and his wife, choose their words carefully and navigate the chilly political waters. The film builds to an ending that I initially thought of as too slight, but the more I think about it, the more I admire its true-to-life quality. There are no chases or shootouts like most thrillers would have for a climax. Instead, the film ponders a question. The story acknowledges that to get ahead one must often remain silent to horrible abuses, but should he do so?

Azor is a nicely shot, eye catching film, with good actors. I especially like Fabrizo Rongione, as Yvan, who has the difficult task of expressing a lot without saying much. I liked Azor a week ago, but I like it even more now.

Azor

[CinemaSerf · 7/10 · 17 April 2024]

Sophisticated banker "De Wiel" (Fabrizio Rongione) heads from his base in Geneva to Buenos Aires to take over from his colleague who has mysteriously vanished. Now this story is set in the 1980s so his destination is still under the slightly anachronistic control of a military junta and the Catholic church. Rumours are abounding about the nature of the role his colleague had in some murky financial dealings and so aside from appeasing their clients, he is to try and find out just what happened to "Kies". Upon arrival he is quickly exposed to the corruption that prevails at just about every level of society and his job is to make them as much money a possible - regardless of the ethics or risks of any such transactions, whilst maintaining an high degree of discretion (aka secrecy). I could have done with just a little more pace from director Andreas Fontana here, but what he does provide is quite a compellingly presented assessment of just how venally menacing things were. His "associates" realising that the writing might be on the wall for them desperately trying to liquidate assets which may, or probably did not, belong to them to insulate themselves in an haven abroad. His encounters are not just with the upper class, but all with all strata of a community that had spent it's life turning a blind eye or being passively complicit. The photography works well with the limited amounts of dialogue, and this is quite an effective psychological thriller that leaves us to do much of the heavy lifting - and judging - ourselves.

The Heart Of Boredom

[jerzy-feliks-klein · 3/10 · 4 December 2021]

It's one of those typical movies that movie critics salivate over. The "tension" that all the reviews allude to comes from pointless dialogues and long silences and those long shots that's supposed to represent the character's loneliness and internal turmoil. For most part the dialogues are stiff and theatrical, it just feels like a play for most of the time, and a really pretensions and boring one. The main character looks like he has a constipation for the entire movie. This should have been a TV movie at best. The pretentious references to The Heart of Darkness like traveling down the river to meet the baddie is just that - pretentious references.

The only quality comes in the last 5 minutes but it doesn't justify the dreadful 85 minutes that supersede that.

It tries to be like Friedkin's Sorcerer (especially using that transistor music which in this movie really feels fake and forced) or Antonioni's The Passenger. It's neither and doesn't come even close. If you want to watch a good movie about that disappearances in Argentina at the time of the military junta watch Costa-Gavras' Missing with Jack Lemon. This is just a poor, student's tribute to 70's political drama.

I'm giving it 3 stars because there are movies worse than this. I thought about giving it 1 just to correct the rating because this film is absolutely nowhere 10, 9 or even 8. Critics giving it 100/100 is just a joke...

Aggressively anti-action take on hearts of darkness/apocalypse now

[billorourke-73956 · 9/10 · 7 January 2022]

This review contains spoilers and this movie is particularly designed to be watched without spoilers so please read the review after watching the film.

The opening of the film is a view of palm trees. It is the precise same opening frame you will see when you watch Apocalypse Now, one of Hollywood's biggest movie spectacles. But as the film unfolds we are treated to a movie that has no real spectacle and is aggressively anti-action, so the comparison seems absurd. Fontana and Llinas have crafted a movie that is free of action not because of budgetary constraints but by artistic choice. This is a modernist take on Hearts of Darkness and its themes of colonial imperialism, cultural dissonance and moral nihilism.

The structure is a series of dialogue set pieces in which our Marlowe, Ivan de Weil, navigates the murky financial world in 80s junta-era Argentina. He is new and the waters are muddy. The unseen Kurtz of the piece, his missing colleague, hovers at the outer edges of the screen. De Weil passes through a series of meetings with increasingly sinister and more powerful stakeholders. He does not know what is going on and neither does the audience. The tension in each scene is maintained by methodical multilingual interaction, with no clear picture of who is a good guy and who has gone rotten.

De Weil is motivated by a sense of professionalism to his clients and also by a need to maintain his business. Added to this is a keen sense of his own precarious position as a male breadwinner. His companion on the trip is his wife. She is charming throughout, they are the epitome of a modern professional team. But in private she presses her husband to succeed. He feels a sense of impending emasculation should the trip end in failure. He must do the 'manly' thing.

Spoilers The film culminates in a trip up river. De Weil arrives at what appears to be a trade of some kind, there are trucks and men and someone is in charge, reading from a list. The list sounds mundane. It must be code for something. But code for what? Guns? Ammo? Drugs? As the list continues it becomes clear that it isn't code at all. This is not a trade concerned with horrors to come but a trade concerning the horrors that have already occurred.

What will De Weil do? Well, he will do what any good colonial always does - he will exploit it.

Ok if you're patient (really patient)

[ray-ataergin-781-753477 · 5/10 · 8 December 2021]

In a few short sentences:

• Nice cinematography
• Weird and annoying soundtrack
• Ok acting
• Slow pace (slow enough to make me quit watching after 1/3 of the movie)

Dark Political Thriller

[Pairic · 9/10 · 3 November 2021]

Azor: Argentina, 1980, the height of Junta's dirty war, Yvan (Fabrizio Rongione) is a private banker from Geneva who travels to the country after his banks representative there, Rene, has disappeared. He makes a journey into the heart of the darkness as he meets with his banks clients or perhaps it's a descent into the circles of Hell as his driver's name is Dante. We witness corruption but also fear on the part of Yvan's upper class clients, the kleptocratic wing of the Junta is even seizing property belonging to the super rich, they are anxious to send money abroad. Even a big rancher cannot save his daughter who had leftist sympathies. The sense of evil is palpable and the tension builds as Yvan follows Rene's trail. A taut political thriller. Directed by Andreas Fontana from a screenplay by Albert Dupontel and Mariano Llinás. 9/10.

Oblique look at the Dirty War in Argentina-(Heart of Darkness)(SPOILER)

[LyceeM16 · 8/10 · 8 May 2021]

Much of the film reminded me of Heart of Darkness in subject matter and theme.

The scenes are glossy and engaging but this is ultimately a film about the Dirty War in Argentina and the human toll of the dictatorship--but told in an inventive, oblique way .This is also a film about ethical issues - in the world of banking in particular but equally applicable to the wider world.

The film uses both experienced actors and novices who were plucked form the real world of the film.

The film explores the effect of environment (immense wealth, banking) on character and moral choices.

And besides- I have a real fondness for films that feature pools.

A boring political thriller that leaves a lot to imagination, but ultimately has nothing to show for

[piperartur · 3/10 · 9 April 2022]

Watching this film was one of the most excruciatingly boring experiences that I've gone through in the last 2 years. Everything that could make for an interesting movie - the troublesome political situation in Argentina, the intrigue amidst the upper classes and the ominous feeling that any dissident words can lead to your ruin- is suggested, but not shown.

This creates an atmosphere of danger and illustrates well the political situation of Argentina in the 80s, when the country was ruled by a right-wing junta composed of reactionary officers and corrupt businessmen, much like other countries in South America. However, the most striking aspects of these kind of regime are the violence, brutality and repression of dissidents, which are not explored enough by this film to make it interesting.

The themes explored instead are related to banking, upper-class intrigue and whatever, you won't care if you're a down-to-earth man. Critics say it is a critique of authoritarianism, which it is. It is a terrible critique, however, since it doesn't show (or shows very little) what the argentinian regime of the time was, what it stood for, how it suppressed dissent, or amidst whom it found support.

The movie, in general, has very little character development and very little clearness about what is actually happening. It is the kind of movie that will end and you'll think, "What?".

The best quality of it's film is it's soundtrack. I will give it a 3/10 because it is effective at creating a very uncomfortable atmosphere of fear and authoritarianism, but eventually failing at exploring it all.

Subtle

[patrick-65053 · 9/10 · 1 November 2021]

Beautiful slow feeding story about the corruptive character of business and money in times of dictatorship; although we can all see, and don't agree, it just eats into us; the colors of the movie are a mix of old, ancient, stability and doom in a beautiful country....

A one-line non-drama

[michael-94-389726 · 3/10 · 4 October 2021]

Less here than meet the eye. It's a largely content-free tale that ends with a one-liner. That's it? You ask, as the credits start rolling.

How far ? How desperate?

[avindugunasinghe · 9/10 · 23 June 2022]

Azor is a good example for clever cinema making. It's visuals present to us a dark time of doubt. And with it's thrilling storyline Azor takes the viewer along on a thrilling trip of conspiracies and deadly games entangled with big money.

4/10. Not recommended

[athanasiosze · 4/10 · 14 March 2022]

If you want to watch old people smoking, fascists talking and bankers rollin, this is your movie. Never go full subtle, at least it's not my thing. I love political drama-thrillers and any movie that criticizes any authoritarian government brings a good message. However, this is a nihilistic and cynical movie and i didn't get the message loud and clear.

Every character here is a villain. There are no heroes, no victims, just villains. There is nothing else going on, just boring talking. The critics loved it. I didn't.

Soporific

[derek-duerden · 5/10 · 5 February 2024]

This has been on my MUBI watchlist for such a long time that I've forgotten why it intrigued me in the first place. Perhaps a glowing review in Sight and Sound? Who knows?

In any case, I suggest that you don't waste your time, unless slow-moving, talky, atmospheric drama is your thing. Sure, there are nasty themes bubbling under but I never quite worked out what the director was trying to say about all of this, beyond the obvious. (Different country and industry, but for me the TV series "Magnifica 70" handled the compromises inherent in living with a junta much more eloquently...)

For a debut feature, it's quite nicely shot but I'd definitely put it in the "mood piece" category rather than anything else.

not like The Heart of Darkness

[christopher-underwood · 4/10 · 22 March 2024]

I realised that that this was going to be the world of finance of Buenos Aires but I hoped we would see something more of the City or more of Argentina. Instead this is really just about the wealth, the swimming pools, the horses and the racing, the big posh houses and a private plane. The bankers here are really rich and they talk and drink and smoke and talk again. I noted that it was supposed to be in the 80s and about their dirty war but we do not really get much of what is going on except talking during for the most of 90 minutes out of an hour and forty. In the last ten minutes there is some action, then they go in the evening on a boat as if we are finally going to meet the big man, I thought surely this is not going to be like The Heart of Darkness. Of course it's not but I think they just wanted us to think that as if it was, but then, nothing at all.