In AZOR (2021), a third-generation private banker, Yvan de Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione) travels to Argentina, with his elegant and sophisticated wife Inés (Stéphanie Cléau), to replace his partner René Keys who has mysteriously disappeared. He knows that to bring a wife is part of a client seduction technique. Inés proves her worth, holding strong behind her man, assessing his appearance and strategies.
Yet, upon arriving in Buenos Aires, de Wiel immediately feels like he is treading on eggshells. He struggles to find his way through the web of ambiguities, insinuations and veiled threats to understand what has happened to his previous colleague, while trying to save the reputation of the bank that his father founded from the aftermath of Key’s disappearance. The disappearance of Keys, either voluntary or not, has opened a chasm that de Wiel is anxious to close to avoid a stampede for the exit. We are thrown into the cloistered and opaque world of private banking, where special codes and even terminology, is unique to the process and where discretion, stability and reliability is all.
Fabrizio Rongione and Stéphanie Cléau at the Races in Buenos Aires
Based in the period around the 1980s, when the Military dictatorship and the ‘Dirty War’ are in full swing, it soon becomes clear that no one is safe. We become aware that even the influential Toribio, who holds everyone in awe at the high value of his superb thoroughbred horses, could fall at any moment. That leaves everyone desperately seeking a safe haven for their money, but no one can risk revealing what is at stake. Other banks, like Credit Suisse circle like wolves around their prey, vieing for the lucrative opportunities that these hard times provide. Families with money know that they have become targets. “they are coming for us” says one lady, clearly in fear of her position, status and even her life. At the same time, large amounts of the funds looking for a safe haven are as dirty as the war itself, being closely linked to the political violence of the Regime.
Azor
Invited to a reunion at the elite ‘Circle of Arms,’ de Wiel is almost overpowered by the smell of unseen power, even masonic atmosphere, that emanates from those corridors. This ‘club’ is closed to all bar a tiny elite: bankers mingle with men of the cloth, or with military and selected politicians. This is where the big decisions are made and you can feel it, like participating in a sinister dance. Comments like “we must eradicate the parasites” are banded about, while Monseigneur Tatoski (played by Pablo Torre Nilsson, son of director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson) is particularly creepy. A chamber of horror hides behind these elegant walls.
Fabrizio Rongione
De Wiel being, in part, intimidated, decides to observe. He has learnt the art of ‘Azor’, Swiss banking slang for ‘Keep schtum’ and ‘know when to keep quiet’. He comes across as a tortured soul, beset with doubts and even fear, that pervades every corner of this murky world. Yet he has power. This he gradually sees, as he is courted and feted to a large extent, always having to interpret the oblique and ambiguous conversations that surround him. In his self-efacing manner, he struggles to uncover what the word ‘Lázaro’ means, that he found scribbled in his predecessor’s apartment. Is it a person? A place? He senses it is behind his predecessor’s disappearance and it smells of danger.
With great subtlety, minimal dialogue, carefully chosen mise- en-scène and an evocative soundtrack that feels like it is inhabited by whispers, Andreas Fontana draws us into this unsettling world with nuance and skill. Despite being Swiss, Fontana lived many years in Argentina and as he says:
“I would not have been able to base this movie there, without knowing Argentina as well as I do. In every part of the world, when there is a dictatorship, there is this kind of thing. They work with fear… It could have been in South Africa with apartheid, Nicaragua or Brazil.”
Fontana, who himself plays a cameo role as a piano player in the production, has cast some of his characters against type. Fabrizio Rongione, for example, had previously worked with the Dardenne Brothers in a very different role (Deux Jours, Une Nuite 2014). Also, as Fontana reveals, 90% of the Argentine cast are non- professional people, that arose from the environment that they were working in. This lends an air of authenticity. It reveals a world of wealth that moves around the world normally unseen by the general public. Perhaps just as well!
AZOR (2021) will be screened at the BFI London Film Festival in the 'First Feature Competition' on Wednesday Oct 13th and Thursday Oct 14th
Also to be screened at ARTHOUSE CROUCH END Fri, 29 October.
Director Andreas Fontana
Writers Andreas Fontana and Mariano Llinás
Producers David Epiney and Eugenia Mumenthaler
DOP Gabriel Sandru
Music Paul Courlet
Editor Nicolas Desmaison
Cast Fabrizio Rongione, Stéphanie Cléau, Elli Mederos, Pablo Torre Nilson., Carmen Iriondo
