All I knew about Lucha Libre wrestling is what I learned at Lucha Libre Taco Shop in Mission Hills. I’ve never been a fan of any kind of wrestling, but I loved the movie “The Wrestler” (Mickey Rourke). And this is like “The Wrestler” meets “Hoosiers” with a dash of….fabuloussss!! As they say in the ads for the film, Cassandro was the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.”
Saul Armendariz (Gael Garcia Bernal in an Oscar-worthy performance) had been watching luchadores on TV with his dad as a child. His father treated him poorly and cheated on his mother. When Saul is old enough, he starts wrestling in small places (like a shop that fixes cars during the day), with the name El Topo. He’s always on the losing end (and really, how would he ever be expected to “win” against a big, bald dude named Gigantico, who is twice his size?).
There’s a female wrestler he’s a fan of named Sabrina (Roberta Colindrez of “Vida”). He asks her to train him, and she convinces him he should embrace his sexuality as a gay man, and wrestle as an “exotico” (those are luchadores who wrestle in drag). He goes against the grain by being a bit tougher than the usual exoticos, and he also bails on the mask they all wear over their heads. And who can blame him? He probably thinks it would ruin all the makeup and lashes he spent so much time applying.
His mother Yocasta (Perla De La Rosa) has a job tailoring and doing laundry for wealthy folks in El Paso. She doesn’t watch her son wrestle, but she does help set him up with a macho wrestler who is still in the closet. That leads to a lengthy affair, despite the man being married with kids.
Apparently wrestling crowds hate homosexuals, and the exoticos are usually booed. Horrible things are yelled at them from the crowd. Yet Cassandro is so flamboyant and good at what he does, crowds start cheering. This leads to a sleazy agent (Joaquin Cosio of “Savages”) representing him, and singer Felipe (Bad Bunny) hooking him up with drugs when needed (the film really underplayed just how into drugs Cassandro really got, and they never showed the suicide attempt I read about online).
There’s one scene involving the agent that’s straight out of “Boogie Nights” where he’s using his same speech on a new wrestler he’s trying to get into the fold.
When Cassandro scores a big match with the legendary El Hijo del Santo (who played himself), whose famous father El Santo is one he idolized as a child – it’s like the scene in “Hoosiers” where the small school shows up at the huge arena to play their big championship game and is overwhelmed by the size of the place. Something happens in that match that will bring you to tears. From that point on in the movie, I needed tissues for all the tears.
I wasn’t familiar with the documentary “Cassandro the Exotico!” that came out a few years ago, and wasn’t familiar with the documentary work writer/director Roger Ross Williams (The Apollo) had done previously. He did a documentary piece on luchadores and that led to this movie, his first feature. Fun Fact: Williams was the first black director to win an Oscar, for his documentary short in 2010 called “Music for Prudence.”
I initially thought Bernal may have been miscast, but he conveys sadness in scenes, flamboyance in other scenes, and he deserves all the accolades he’ll get from this film.
It was fun hearing a spicy version of the standard “Fever” and a Spanish version of “I Will Survive” but more than the songs, I really loved the score of this film. Brazilian composer Marcelo Zarvos (“Fences”) uses trumpets and horns, creating a jazzy, Latin flavor that works wonderfully.
There’s a vomit scene, because as I always state – 89% of all films seem to need one these days.
Perhaps it’s not the most innovative bio-pic, and it’s by the numbers; but it’s highly entertaining.
This was a good movie, that’s only playing at a handful of theaters in San Diego.
3 ½ stars out of 5.