At Azor, it is well known that money can talk but does not shout. The deceptive simplicity of the film’s mise en scene and subdued performances make Andreas Fontana’s Dirty War thriller a very quiet beginning. As the film explains towards its end, this is a translation of the title from banking jargon which could mean to “keep mum” rather than giving it a command form as adopted in this context. In certain moments, Yvan (Fabrizio Rongione), a banker from Geneva, should let his rich clients’ fetishistic speech pass without comment. However, Azor also signifies an Old Testament deity who assists people and consequently raises queries concerning the exact purpose of Yvan’s diplomacy—whom he helps and supports—and provides the film’s underlying framework.
The Latin American country has reached such a state where Argentinian films about its late 20th-century history of state violence are themselves already a separate niche that sells globally. In 2018, Benjamín Naishtat’s great Rojo explored Argentina prior to the coup via tropes borrowed stylishly from American neo-noir (and who doesn’t remember how hilarious and dumb was The Secret of Their Eyes winning Oscar in 2009) There is less formal play in Azor than in Rojo or more story: Yvan comes to Buenos Aires to see wealthy customers of his bank and assure them their money remains intact amid political uncertainty. This insular film moves along with an inscrutable slowness as if its characters – starting with Yvan himself but also his fashionable wife Ines (Stéphanie Cléau) accompanying him on visits, and all other well off entrepreneurs or landowners whose contacts are in his Rolodex– were speaking their own secret language. And they are; business speak as well as those hidden signals for those who know that their government may be monitoring them because some members do not like seeing big money moved to the continent. Or at least without getting their own share.
Fontana will have passed through a Swiss-born interview, and he has explained that his own grandfather’s experience in Argentina’s financial sector was instrumental in the development of the professional background of Azor. All this painstaking authenticity paradoxically results into an impression of completely strange ambiance. It is not easy to find a way in it, and even if you are attentive, you may sometimes lose your orientation from the limited amount of information provided about Yvan’s company, especially Mr. Keys—his colleague and senior partner—an enigmatic storyteller who was well known among the Argentine elites for many years and also characterized as “depraved.” (That happened to me.)
It is how he creates and captures a state of placid paranoia by juxtaposing all these elusive interconnections—suggested business arrangements; actualised deals; personal stories with executive-class nostalgia related or withheld—and the present danger that is posed by a military junta driven by lust for power. The film slowly transforms into fear out of its uneventfulness, while negative feelings continue after every encounter that is full of luxury as well as bright lightings. In what comes closest to a traditional genre-movie sequence, Yvan sneaks into Keys’s deserted hotel room at night… Nothing really. However, since Azor is so sensitive to anxiety caused by absence and forced disappearance there cannot be any evidence that may be seen—a person; a crime; an explanation—hence its lack serves as confirmation on its own part which becomes more insidious over time. Finally, Yvan thinks it would probably be best not knowing, let alone talking about it again anyway. Among them, Azor most effectively captures the numbness required to keep silent during one’s comfortable life but which had diverse sensations specifically limited to certain periods only.
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