After
15 years of a dictatorship Chilean Augusto Pinochet, due to
international pressure, was allowing the people to vote in an upcoming
plebiscite, an expression of the people’s will, as to whether they
favored, voting ‘yes’ or not, voting ‘no’ as to if Pinchot should remain
in office. There was no doubt, legally or not, that the majority of
people would vote ‘yes’.

Director
Pablo Larrain has made this docudrama regarding the election with a
screenplay by Pedro Peirano based on a play by Antonio Skarmeta called
“The Referendum” and retitled it “No”. Each side of the question had 15
minutes a day to run an ad on television for 27 straight days with most
of the ‘no’ ads regulated to the late hours. Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia
Bernal) is a hot shot ad executive who is put in charge of the No vote
and tackles it like he was selling a previous product he handled which
was a soda called Free. He uses marketing for politics as most ad
agencies use it to sell cars, vacation spots or anything that uses
balloons, rainbows, kids, blue skies and, in this case a mime that is a
running joke throughout the movie.

Rene
is prime custodian of his son Simon (Pascal Montero) while his
estranged, activist wife Veronica (Antonia Zegers) accuses him of
working for the Pinochet regime. He is the son of an exiled Chilean
dissident and Rene dresses in jeans to work and skate boards all over
town. He also doesn’t hesitate to send his kid to bed so that he could
play with Simon’s train set. It is an old friend of his father’s,
socialist politician Urrutia (Luis Gnecco) who talks Rene into taking
the ad campaign while Rene’s boss Lucho Guzman (Alfredo Castro) takes
the opposing campaign.

While
it may have been in keeping with the time I found the direction,
camerawork and editing to be very distracting, in some spots amateurish,
and didn’t really add anything to the film.

Gael
Garcia Bernal has a very interesting face, penetrating eyes and, if you
have seen him in any other film, you know he is a fine actor who needs
that breakout role but this isn’t it.

After watching “No” for an hour and fifty-eight minutes I have to get corny and end with say no to “No”.