An eerie, unsettling conspiracy drama about the ultra-wealthy from director Andreas Fontana, in which a Swiss banker navigates Argentina’s dirty war50 best films of 2021 in the UKMore on the best culture of 2021Pure evil is all around in this unnervingly subtle, sophisticated movie; it is a conspiracy drama-thriller, shot with a kind of desiccated blankness, about the occult world of super-wealth and things not to be talked about. The title is a Swiss banker’s codeword in conversation for “be silent”. It is set in 1980 in
Argentina, at the time of the junta’s dirty war against leftists and dissidents. Azor gives a queasy new perspective on the horror of those times, and there is even a nauseous echo of the Swiss banks’ attitude to their German neighbours in the second world war.
Yvan (Fabrizio Rongione) is a private banker from Geneva – elegant, discreet, an excellent speaker of Spanish, English and French – who is making what appears to be an emergency diplomatic visit to soothe his well-heeled and secretive clients in Argentina, in the company of his elegant, supportive wife Inès (Stéphanie Cléau). Yvan’s rich clientele are deeply troubled by the new political regime; they fear that they could find their assets being sequestrated by the government. And what is even worse is that these people were used to dealing with Yvan’s colleague Réné, a genial and exuberant figure who has also now vanished.