LOOKING FOR THE INNER CHILD
It is a unique occasion when in the competition of the respectable Venice Film Festival a director comes along, young and slightly known when compared to the rest, after a boisterous debut at an even younger age and the sensational hit that was The Angel. One could not have a shred of doubt that the auteur’s ambitions can only grow and audiences will feel them.
Kill the Jockey presents an attractive conflict between the drinking hero that loses control of himself and, at the same time, loses a valuable horse without dying at a decisive race, as well as his promoter, a phlegmatic mob boss with a mysterious boy on his hands. The authentic conflict is with Ortega’s rising talent, which accumulates images in his head alongside considerable resources. Kill the Jockey is an impressive coproduction among many countries. On one hand, we have the Argentinian nationality of its director, and on the other hand, there is the insecurity of what he wants to say with his film.
The accumulation of phantasmagoria in the story is going to impress audiences right up to the first half of the film. Afterwards it becomes exhausted and reaches a dead end, only to leave at the end an incomprehension whose visual beauty is hard not to acknowledge.
Probably the most exact interpretation of this black comedy can be narrowed down to the search of the Jockey’s lost “I” after an accident where he loses part of his memories. If he is really suffering a confusion, it is something we may ask him in the end, but we will not get any answers. Never was the talent of Nahuel Peréz Biscayart (120 BPM) captured in such an expressive manner. While he is on the path of objectivity and freedom, he is sought out by hitmen that want to kill him. Besides, he has a girlfriend (Úrsula Corberó, from Money Heist), also a jockey, who is expecting his child. However, towards the ending it must be understood in a symbolic manner, as a phenomenon, that this is the arrival into the world of a purified hero, who acquires a childish innocence.
Ortega’s comedy, entertaining as it is and free of daily hot political topics, while at the same time turning into fiction the anguishing birth of the auteur’s true cinephile language, which is close to give birth into the world, but is not yet realized.
In the meanwhile, Kill the Jockey intrigues Argentine cinema. Takes elements and even the humor from Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar and Aki Kaurismäki, whose wonderful and unreplaceable cinematographer Timo Salminen –-a virtuoso of the fixed camera and the artfully arranged mise-en-scene––, constitute the main charm of the film.
Director: Luis Ortega. Screenwriters: Fabián Casas, Luis Ortega, Rodolfo Palacios. Cast: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Úrsula Corberó, Roly Serrano, Luis Ziembrowski, Daniel Fanego, Roberto Carnaghi, Osmar Nuñez, Adriana Aguirre. Producers: Charlie Cohen, Benjamín Domenech, Santiago Gallelli, Axel Kuschevatzky, Isaac Lee, Paz Lázaro, Luis Ortega, Esteban Perroud, Matías Roveda, Cindy Teperman. Runtime: 96 minutes.
