Directed by Pablo Larraín
(R)
***
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“The power of counterintuitive thinking” wins again in this “unexpectedly amusing” political drama from Chile, said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. Based on the true story of a 1988 referendum that led to the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial regime, it features Gael García Bernal as a quietly charismatic adman who must convince opposition leaders that their best chance of toppling Pinochet is to associate themselves with fun, not anger. Unfortunately, this contender for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is “largely a gimmick picture,” said Kyle Smith inthe New York Post. Shot with ’80s-era video equipment, No affects a news-style aesthetic that doesn’t so much please the eye as subject it to “a light massage with a hunk of tree bark.” If the director was trying to call attention to himself, “mission accomplished.” Yet the story his film tells is far from one-dimensional, said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. Bernal’s character ultimately succeeds because he grasps that the world is changing, that the road to the future lies in tying a people’s hopes to their power as consumers.
