No

tonight, April 25. Chilean director Pablo Larraín has sketched out a lively little docudrama about the ad campaign (vote “No!”) that turned an election against the supposedly unstoppable dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1988. Based on an unproduced play by Antonio Skármeta (Il Postino), the story gives an inside view of ad men trying to make the most of a politically fraught windfall. Larrain focuses in particular on a young go-getter and rumpled hot-shot named René Saavedra (Gael García Bernal at his live-wire best). A not particularly political type despite coming from a once-exiled family, Saavedra masterminds a counterintuitive campaign that succeeds way beyond anything he seems capable of imagining. Alfredo Castro is good as the older colleague who is both rival and mentor, and so is Antonia Zegers in the role of Saavedra’s politically militant ex-wife. Pageant Theatre. Rated R.