Screened as part of NZIFF 2016

Much Ado About Nothing 2016

Aquí no ha pasado nada

Directed by Alejandro Fernández Almendras

A hot date and an invitation to a great party have a fateful aftermath for a handsome young Chilean in this taut tale of crime, punishment and the price of justice, based on a notorious real-life case.

Chile / France In English and Spanish with English subtitles
96 minutes DCP

Producers

Augusto Matte
,
Pedro Fontaine

Screenplay

Alejandro Fernández Almendras
,
Jerónimo Rodríguez

Photography

Inti Briones

Editors

Soledad Salfate
,
Alejandro Fernández Almendras

Production designer

Valentina Silva

With

Agustín Silva (Vicente)
,
Paulina García (Roxana)
,
Alejandro Goic (Uncle Julio)
,
Luis Gnecco (Attorney Barria)
,
Daniel Alcaíno (District Attorney)
,
Samuel Landea (Manuel Larrea)
,
Augusto Schuster (Diego)
,
Geraldine Neary (Francisca)
,
Isabella Costa (Ana)
,
Camilo Carmona (local guy)

Festivals

Sundance, Berlin 2016

Basing his story on a notorious case in Chile where a middle-class kid took a manslaughter rap for the son of a one-percenter, writer/director Alejandro Fernández Almendras embeds his taut anatomy of affluenza in a seductive evocation of high-flier hedonism (with a great soundtrack).

Lacking funds after a year studying in LA, Vicente (charismatic Agustín Silva) heads back to his parents’ beach house on the Chilean coast without a plan. Two girls who come on to him at the beach invite him to a lavish house party. More than a few shots are consumed while he tries to figure out whether it’s him they are into or each other. Later that night the three of them are still working on it in the back of someone’s car when the car stops and there’s an incident of some kind that barely penetrates his consciousness. The next morning Vicente is visited by his new friends and told exactly what he’s going to say to the cops.

Silva contributes handsomely to Almendras’ schema as the coolly disaffected millennial barely acknowledging that the system he holds in such disdain thinks even less of him. The Spanish title is more accurately translated as ‘nothing to see here move along’.