Eliseo is a talented composer. A work of his, Rapsodia Macabra = Macabre Rhapsody (!) has been associated with two traumatic incidents in his life and the shock has unhinged him. He has destroyed part of the score and is interned in a mental institution. Ricardo, an opportunist, dishonest musician is trying to rescue the missing parts of the Rapsodia to present the work as his own.
The problem is, Ricardo's quest is described in a series of disjointed and often incoherent happenings, with secondary characters that add nothing to the tale. The worst parts are perhaps the episode of the floating platform, which makes one suspect that the movie has switched to the black comedy genre, and the ending, where melodrama explodes with megaton force. Good actors are not given a chance. Gaston Pauls as Ricardo is constrained to play a villain/sleaze from Central Casting and Benjamín Vicuña as Eliseo is forced to emote endlessly; he doesn't get a single lighthearted line. And last but not least, we get to hear parts of the Rapsodia Macabra with the inevitable outcome: why the fuss about this?
Fortunately, this mess was not career-ending for director Pablo Larrain. He went on to direct a string of good movies, the best perhaps The Club (2015) with Post Mortem (2010), No (2012) and Neruda (2016) following close behind in quality. Even his Hollywood movie Jackie (2016) was solid. So, if this was your first Larrain movie, don't give up; the others are also in the streaming services.
