Nominated last week for an Oscar for best foreign-language film, Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain’s “No” is headlined by Guadalajara-born actor Gael Garcia Bernal playing an advertising executive charged with helping to oust Chilean dictator Augustin Pinochet from power.
Garcia’s character signs on as a consultant with the “No” campaign in Chile’s 1988 referendum on the future of General Pinochet, who had been in power for 15 years since staging a coup d’état to overthrow the elected socialist government of Salvador Allende.
If the “Yes” campaign won the plebiscite, Pinochet would have remained as president for another eight years. Eschewing ads that touched on the brutality of the Pinochet years, Rene Saavedra (Garcia) concocts an uplifting, positive campaign that, in the words of one reviewer, “attempts to sell ‘freedom’ the way he’s previously sold soft drinks.”The “No” campaign won with 56 percent of the votes and Pinochet complied with the will of the people, stepping down a year later as a democratic election was held.
Although the film has been critically acclaimed, its release caused some controversy in Chile, where Pinochet still has many loyal followers, despite the catalog of human rights abuses recorded during his regime (more than 3,000 dissidents disappeared).
Garcia has been involved in two Mexican films previously nominated for Best Foreign Language Oscar gongs: “Amores Perros” (2000) and “El Crimen de Padre Amaro” (2002).
Though still only 34, Garcia is assembling a commendable body of work. He played a sexually charged young man in the acclaimed road movie “Y Tu Mamá También,” Che Guevara in Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles’ “The Motorcycle Diaries,” a Mexican immigrant who flees from the Border Patrol in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Oscar-nominated “Babel,” and a cross-dresser in Pedro Almodovar’s “Bad Education.”
Politically and socially engaged, Garcia has supported the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico and attended WTO protests. He is a staunch supporter of independent Mexican film and already has 18 producer credits to his name.