Club (The)

There's nothing quite like being lulled into a false sense of comfortable security...

Muted colours, beautiful score...sweet domesticity and a dog playing on the beach.

A house, by the sea, for retired priests...run by a nun who is as unsettling as she is brittle.

These are no ordinary priests...they are abusers of children, of people, of their position. They have evaded justice...put to pasture in isolation, protected by the institution in which they erroneously served.

Pablo Larraín plays with emotion as if he were juggling the hottest of potatoes...one-by-one they reveal their stories...one-by-one they try to justify themselves...to a pious, modern-day priest who has the power of their continued comfortable existence lying in the palm of his sanctimonious hand. Confess or face [state not ecclesiastical] justice!

And so...the game begins...to save what they've got.

It's not pleasant. The lies. The manipulation. The conniving. The cruelty...and, the twisting turns of the one-up-manship is a revelation...as to what people are capable of to keep breathing - freely - God's air...beware these sheep, they are wolves.

This is an experience...

Pithy pathos, pathetic pity pitted against augmented anger and phenomenous fury...it's exhausting, exasperating and evocative.

What a journey. What a film...as unpleasant as it is un-missable.

Trailer...