Quick Synopsis: Saul Armendariz is a gay luchador wrestler under the name El Topo. His career and life changes when he starts to compete as Cassandro, a flamboyant exotico wrestler.

I’m a big fan of films like this. Professional wrestling is f*cking weird, there’s no other way to say it. The people who fund it are weird, the people who perform it are weird, and the people who watch it are weird. So it usually makes for fantastic watch. But this? It fails to do one basic thing: explaining the lingo, it assumes you know what an exotico is. I mean, I do, because I’m a fucking mark for this business. Unless you know the business, the story won’t mean as much. Not just the aforementioned exotico, but it also doesn’t really do a decent enough job of explaining why certain people are big deals. His match with El Hijo Del Santo was a HUGE deal, Santo is a legend in lucha libre and his importance cannot be overstated. In Cassandro, his importance and relevance aren’t even stated. It’s this kind of attitude which makes it difficult to figure out whether this will appeal to people who aren’t fans of wrestling in the first place. It’s important for a film to know that audiences don’t know everything. Even I know that, and I’m basically an idiot. In my Napoleon review, I originally had a joke about how “This film is long, 157 minutes. Although that’s English minutes, in French minutes it’s much shorter”. That’s an obscure (even by my standards) reference to how the French and English had different calculations for what counted as a foot, which is partly what led to the fallacy that Napoleon was short, listed as being 5 foot 2 when in English measurements he was 5 foot 6. I loved that joke, but I knew if I did, I’d have to explain it, and as has just been proven, that would be dull and shit.

So yeah, this could prove impenetrable for casual moviegoers. For those who know? It’s delightful. It’s not great for providing you a life story, but it does provide a useful foundation for you to want to find out more. It’s helped by the performance of Gael Garcia Bernal, showcasing Cassandro as someone deeply insecure and broken but whose entire wrestling persona is based on overconfidence. His story is deeply emotional to watch unfold, especially the frayed relationship with his homophobic father. Yes, this is a story about professional wrestling, but it’s also a story about finding yourself (always make sure to check down the back of the sofa), about masculinity, and about being true to yourself.

Originally that ended with me saying it’s about bigotry, but it’s really not. The story itself is, but the way it’s told means it doesn’t really come through. The very nature of exotico’s traditionally existed to reinforce negative gay stereotypes. They were/sometimes still are grotesque caricatures of male feminity, whose entire purpose was to repulse and annoy the audience, who would then cheer when the traditionally heterosexual male hero would come along and beat the shit out of them whilst the crowd shouted homophobic slurs. That’s still the world we see in this film, but then he wins them over almost instantly. That kind of undercuts the homophobia he endured, like as soon as they saw him they all changed their minds. It kind of feels like a wasted opportunity. His rise to fame also seems to skip over a few things, so his match with Del Santo doesn’t really feel earned.

I have been a bit harsh to this but it is still a fun watch. His first entrance to a flamenco Spanish-language cover of I Will Survive is fun as hell, and there’s a scene near the end which is an absolutely fantastic piece of performance storytelling. Cassandro is on a talk show and a fan stands up and thanks him for giving him the courage to come out to his father. You can tell this means a lot to Cassandro, but he’s also slightly bitter and jealous that he’s talking to someone who was accepted by their own father when he still isn’t accepted by his. It’s a subtle facial performance and is so damn perfect.

In summary; it’s on Prime so if you have an account you might as well watch it, but you might be best off watching a documentary instead.