‘Kill the Jockey’ Review: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart and Daniel Gimenez Cacho Stun in Gender Fluid Mob Dramedy | Venice

The search for identity has always been a staple subject for cinema. Who are we? What is our place in the world? How are we perceived by others and how can our actions influence that perception? It’s a very human search for meaning, and film has constantly tried to analyze it in every possible way. Luis Ortega’s new film, Kill The Jockey, premiering at the 81^st Venice Film Festival, advances this search.

The movie starts with three shady-looking people entering a bar in Buenos Aires. They are looking for Remo Manfredini, the most popular and celebrated jockey in the city. He’s considered the best of the bunch, and the most reliable. Well, reliable he’s not anymore. His behavior has started to be self-destructive and off-putting, to the point that we see him preparing for a race smoking a cigarette and drinking alcohol where he has injected a doping drug for horses, sending him into a state of confusion that will lose him the race. Acting like this, he’s jeopardizing the investments of his boss, mafia chief Sirena (a supremely effective Daniel Gimenez Cacho), a man with whom he has contracted quite a few debts. Sirena’s horse-racing syndicate is increasingly frustrated by Remo’s erratic behavior and it’s ready to give him an ultimatum.

He’s also started to ruin his relationship with his girlfriend pregnant Abril (Money Heist’s star Úrsula Corberó), another talented jockey who both cares for him and rivals him on the track. Their relationship is not exactly bristling with passion, even though they share a dancing scene that is sure to make an impression on viewers. Another threat comes from fellow jockey Ana (played with sturdy sexiness by Mariana De Girolamo), who shows evident interest in Abril, adding the first layer of fluid sexuality into the film. Seemingly untouched by all that surrounds him, Remo spirals even more into his alcoholism.

All of this can come to an end if he manages to win a race with the help of a new horse, Mishima, shipped straight from Japan by Sirena’s mobsters for an exorbitant price. A victory in the next race might mean cleared debts and a fresh start for Remo. But his  troubles are just out of control: just when it seems he’s finally ready to claim the prize, he leads his horse onto a fence, landing him into a hospital bed. He wakes up some time later, unaware of who he is and why he’s there. He decides to leave the hospital in secret: he grabs a fur coat and goes away. We see him wandering the streets of Buenos Aires, freed of his past and free on his path to reinvention. What will he do when the past comes back to haunt him?

Kill The Jockey is a very fascinating film; a funny, sometimes very funny, sometimes grotesque black comedy about a mob boss chasing down a jockey, but it’s also a tender, sweet melodrama about a man looking for his true identity in a world that has imposed one on him that he despises. It’s a film shot with melancholy and manic energy, bristling with ideas, both original and not,

The expectation that all films should be entirely original is legitimate, though maybe implausible, which is why director Luis Ortega wears his inspirations on his sleeves: it is indebted to the films of Pedro Almodóvar, colorful, sensual and so interested in the duplicitous nature of personal identity; it has callbacks to the surrealism of Buñuel, and, being lensed by Aki Kaurismaki’s DP Timo Salminen, it also features a certain Scandinavian absurdist sense of humor. There is also a genuinely hilarious homage to The Godfather. Despite this, Kill The Jockey does not feel a mish-mash of themes and styles borrowed from others but it is fully a creation of its director.

It’s a film with a splintered identity just like its protagonist, and instead of battling this particular aspect, it embraces it and plays with it. Does Remo have a dissociative episode? The film turns it into a scene straight from a horror movie. The racing scenes? Shot like an action director would. Its quirky and multifaceted nature could potentially be frustrating to some viewers, especially in the second half, when the surreal side of the film takes over, but at its core, Kill The Jockey is a movie about the fluidity of one’s identity and how we need to nurture or kill some aspects of us in order to be born again, just like Remo is born again walking out of the tunnels that he often walks in throughout the movie, highlighting the central theme of constant rebirth that is so important in the movie.

At the center of all this is the titular jockey, played with magnificent devotion by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, whose athleticism and body plasticity has shades of Denis Lavant in Leos Carax’s Holy Motors. His Remo is a creature of despair, of self-destruction, of newly found hope, of strong determination. If the movie works, it works because of his commitment to this enigmatic and fascinating character.

Though sometimes too vague to be fully cohesive as a whole, Kill The Jockey’s idea that we are individuals constantly evolving and exploring is very fascinating, and the way it is embraced by its director and cast is quite remarkable.

Grade: B

This review is from the 2024 Venice Film Festival. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.