Just when you thought you’d never see another stylishly surreal, Spanish-language quasi-musical about a character who escapes a life of violence and corruption during a gender transition, here comes Kill the Jockey — a new import that shows up just months after Emilia Pérez became an Oscar-winning cause célèbre.
While watching this blatantly strange queer farce, it’s hard not to think of Jacques Audiard’s divisive Netflix original, which starred problematic trans actress Karla Sofia Gascón as a Mexican cartel leader who becomes a pillar of the community after transitioning. Jockey truly one-ups Pérez — that accidental campfest — in creating a trans odyssey that’s even more absurd and offbeat. It’s like the filmmakers knew Pérez was coming and went into hold-my-cerveza mode.
In the more-dangerous-than-you-might-think world of Argentine horse racing, legendary Buenos Aires jockey Remo Manfredini (the Buster Keaton-looking Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) has become a self-destructive mess. His excessive drinking and drug use make it difficult for him to even stay on a horse. While it’s obvious he’s tired of racing, he’s too much of an asset to Rubén Sirena (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a powerful mobster/mentor who’s always schlepping around a half-naked baby. Remo’s also stuck in a loveless relationship with his pregnant girlfriend and chief rival Abril (Úrsula Corberó), who wants to be the most successful jockey in the family.
A tragic racetrack mishap lands Remo in the hospital and makes Sirena choose violence. Before Sirena can initiate his vengeance, dispatching his aging, tired henchman to retrieve Remo, a bandaged Remo comes out of his coma, grabs a mink coat and purse and splits. He goes on a mostly nocturnal journey getting to know Delores, his long-dormant feminine side, who has now come out to see what’s up.
Jockey is all about roaming free and living your best life. Here Argentine director/co-writer Luis Ortega (El Angel) has made a deadpan queer satire in which several characters grapple with identity and desire. And Remo isn’t the only one discovering himself. Once Remo is AWOL, Abril has a fling with Ana (the pompadoured Mariana di Girólamo), a fellow female jockey Abril enjoys dancing with in the girls’ locker room. Apparently, the chilly Abril prefers to communicate through dance; at one point, she has a spastic dance-off with Remo (who moves like Denis Lavant at the end of Beau Travail).
Jockey is an intriguing mix of Pedro Almodóvar-level queer-coded melodrama and Aki Kaurismäki-ish droll minimalism, with some oddball, Lynchian absurdity thrown in to keep things engagingly weird. Although there are moments when things are weird for the sake of being weird (especially in the head-scratching finale), Ortega and co-writers Fabian Casas and Rodolfo Palacios sardonically craft an avant-garde sports dramedy with ennui-oozing characters who speak in bone-dry, monotonous tones, occasionally letting some pause-worthy dialogue slip out. But we also get some scrumptious, stunning camera work from cinematographer Timo Salminen, who often bounces from static to tracking shots to catch all the artfully framed absurdity. This is a movie where our hero/heroine literally walks on the ceiling when at their most feminine, but is later stuck in midair limbo when forced to put on jockey gear one last time.
But Jockey isn’t just a portrait of a man’s gender expression being stifled. Ortega also addresses how artists can feel trapped when they’re forced to stay in their place. ‘Why must you behave like an artist?” a character asks a petulant Remo in one scene. In this oppressive, patriarchal world, being creative and independent is just as deviant and immoral as being LGBTQ.
While it may not have the bloodshed or soon-to-be-ripped-off-by-drag-queens musical numbers of Pérez, Kill the Jockey is still one fascinatingly batshit tale of queer redemption.
