La toile de l'araignée

A. It was nit opposition, it was extreme right, nationalist fascist group that overturned Allende, the denocrativcally elected president of Chile B. The movie is not a love story but a political one

This is a great film that was overlooked firstly because of the social eruption in Chile (despite the clearly relation between its story and the facts that lead to the Chilean revolts) - and finally by the pandemic.

I only had the chance to watch it now in 2022. Gladly.

Our latin american cinema usually depicted for the last decades only the left efforts to resist the dictatorships - and their hideous acts - that took over basically every country here due to coups induced by the US in the context of the cold war.

This movie, on the other hand, shows the period from other perspective: the youth that took arms to enforce those coups against popular governments.

Going back and forth in time, from the 70s to the actual times, it depicts a group of three people that were part of a neofascist group - their actions in the past and how they ended up.

With a great and pretty stylish directing, fantastic acting (specially by Mercedes Moran and Maria Valverde) and such an interesting plot, it works so well to show how those wounds from the past are still pretty open in our actual contexts - as lots of people that took part in the conflicts, despite their crimes, are still in the meanders of the elite and power.

In Latin America, we usually prefer to forget what broght us til here, but as this film - and the chilean people have been doing since the period it was released -, shows: that's not the way to evolve and develop really fair societies as we wish. We got to face the past to understand the present and build a better future.

And I am afraid that it will remain underrated, unknown, this so interesting and surprising tale of a group of young idealist, right wing extremists. In the movies speaking of those times, mid seventies, it is always question of left wing groups. This changes a lot, but those young men and women are not the Hitler like fascists, jerks in quest of their own good, their own wealth and fortune. No those young fascists truly believed in a better world, fighting communism and crime in the streets. Look for the scene at the beginning of the film, when the former activist crushes the young robber on the wall with his car. So terrific, brutal and shocking scene, especially when you see the crowd around applaud. And I won't spoil the ending, so disturbing too....A real gem, believe me, from south America. After Argentina years of dictatorship, it is now question of Chile.

Best Chilean movie so far! It's pretty hard to find do. I recommend getting Stan (the Australian version of Netflix) and using a VPN such as NordVPN to be able to watch it.

I'm not going to go too into depth about the plot of this film, since the external reviews cover it quite well. Like Andrés Wood's 2004 film 'Machuca', this film covers the political turmoil of the Allende years in a historically-informed and detailed way that you just do not see in non-Chilean films on the Allende and Pinochet years. As a history buff with an interest in historical revolutions and dictatorships, that in itself is a draw.

However, 'Araña' is not just a 1970s costume drama with political pretensions, but a well-acted drama giving an insider view of fascist activism and it's causes and ongoing effects in Chile's highly stratified class society. The historical drama part plays out a bit better than the contemporary political thriller one, but the film is still very worthwhile overall.

This film did not get any kind of North American release outside of the narrow film festival circuit (it's not even out on DVD), and my only guess is that distributors might have thought the plot was too specific to Chilean history for international audiences, or perhaps that a film that's antifascist but nevertheless is centered on fascist protagonists would not be well-received by 'woke' North American audiences.

As others have noted, this film is oddly very hard to find internationally. It's not on Netflix, nor HBO, nor Amazon Video. The only streaming version I could find is over the Australian service Stan, and for folks outside of Australia, one would need VPN to access it. I was only able to find it after, with great difficulty, downloading a high-resolution Spanish-language version on a Russian social media site, then with further digging, finding English subtitles for it and carefully re-syncing that to the video I downloaded. Some of the most trouble I've gone through to see a film, but I think worth it. In the end, though, it would be good if Netflix picked it up.