Pablo Trapero’s Carancho is a harrowing portrayal of the endless cycle of corruption, where the only escape from society is death. This film noir is set in the dark corners of Buenos Aires, where vultures prey on the innocent and corruption runs the state. With 8,000 people being killed in road traffic accidents every year in Argentina the film is set up with a dark undertone of death. The anti-hero in this film noir is the vulture, Sosa (Ricardo Darín). Sosa is a seductive, yet, predatory character who chases ambulances to the scene of the crash in order to swindle the victim out of their insurance payout. His seductive characteristics seduce the audience into accepting his shady morals.
Sosa must work for the “Foundation”, an organisation that poses as a charitable law firm that is accompanied by police, paramedics and shady lawyers, as he is a disgraced lawyer and has lost his licence to practice. It is at one of these crash scenes that Sosa meets Luján (Martina Gusman), a paramedic training as a doctor. It is here, in this chaotic warzone filled with noise and confusion that their tragic love story begins. Luján disagrees with Sosa’s work and, therefore, in order for them to be together, Sosa must give up his corrupted practices. However, freedom comes at a price and Luján and Sosa find out the price they have to pay to be together when Sosa must take on one last job.
The “Foundation” represents a corrupt society that is unforgiving, as the closing scene represents how there is no escape from the system, except death, as it is a continuous cycle of events. The audience is thrown into this claustrophobic thriller as they too can feel every punch that is thrown and every crash that happens due to the small spaces in which this film was shot. Carancho offers a gritty envisioning of the shattering nature and fragility of the flesh. The opening sequence with the black and white still shots of the shattered glass with a hand and then a foot foreground this fragility. There is a lot of pain in this film, both caused by the characters themselves but also by circumstance.
However, these intense violent scenes are also accompanied by moments of black humour that occur in a contradicting situation. For instance, a fight breaks out between two supposedly injured men lying on hospital beds that Luján is in the process of assessing in a small hospital room. This fight leads to a riot and Luján and her colleagues must lock the doors to prevent the hoards from bursting through. Gun shots are then fired which leads to a moment of calm again. This unexpected outbreak of violence acts as a way of letting off steam, as the audience is released from this tense thrilling film for a moment.
Carancho is a portrait of a moment of chaos within a warzone where loves blossoms from extreme situations. Trapero’s Carancho is definitely a film worth experiencing.
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