This weekend, moviegoers can start celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with Gael Garcia Bernal's new movie "Cassandro" (opening Friday at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas) or seek out the mystery of Agatha Christie's "A Haunting in Venice" (opening Friday at select theaters).
Cassandro the Exótico!
A documentary called "Cassandro, The Exótico," screened at the San Diego Latino Film Festival a few years ago. But this true story of a gay luchador from El Paso, who rose to international stardom, was too irresistible not to be turned into a movie.
In Mexican wrestling, an exótico is a luchador who cross dresses or assumes feminine characteristics that can challenge the machismo of the sport and the culture. In the 1980s, exóticos were often campy.
Enter Saúl Armendáriz (Gael García Bernal) who grew up loving Lucha Libre (Mexican wrestling). He eventually began to wrestle, first as an amateur and eventually as a professional. Since he was physically less imposing than the majority of the macho and massive wrestlers, he got cast as the runt and was required to lose.
Then Sabrina (Roberta Colindrez), a female wrestler, befriends him and becomes his trainer. Together they create Cassandro, an exótico wrestler who flips the script.
The openly gay Saúl did not just want to be the comic relief that always had to lose or be made fun of. His wrestling persona Cassandro, could be sexy, funny and flamboyant as well as strong and powerful. He would go on to wrestle the legendary El Hijo del Santo and to win respect in the ring.
Gael García Bernal is dazzling as Cassandro, capturing the bravado of his wrestling personality while revealing a more vulnerable and subdued side outside the ring.
The film offers an inspiring story of hard fought success. But the score has such a sorrowful undercurrent that I kept waiting for something bad to happen. But the score does inform this story, which is filled with bittersweet emotions. From Saúl's mother, his troubled relationship with his estranged father, and his love for a fellow wrestler who chose to remain closeted.
Director and co-writer Roger Ross Williams navigates the world of sports movies and manages to avoid many of the clichés. He shoots the film with a shallow depth of focus that makes Saúl pop from the background but also occasionally blur into it. He makes Saúl and his struggles feel real, while also introducing many mainstream American viewers to the amazing world of exotico wrestlers.
Agatha Christie's 'A Haunting in Venice'
With "A Haunting in Venice," Kenneth Branagh returns for the third time to play Christie's famous and persnickety Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and to direct another adaptation of her books.
This time around, the case he is thrown into involves a young girl's apparent suicide, and her grieving mother's attempt to hold a séance to communicate with the daughter's spirit. Poirot's reluctant appearance at the séance is engineered by writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), and of course bodies start to pile up immediately prompting the retired detective to start sleuthing again.
The doors and floorboards are not the only creaky thing in this very formulaic mystery. Christie's book had the more playful title of "Hallowe'en Party" but I suspect the name change to "A Haunting in Venice" could make it feel more like part of the universe of the box office hit "The Conjuring."
Branagh first took on Poirot in the 2017 “Murder on the Orient Express” (which did well at the box office with its star-studded cast) and proves to be the best of the three films, which is not a huge compliment. His second outing “Death on the Nile" was shot in 2019, but had a delayed release because of COVID-19. That film had a deathly pace and seriousness that killed its appeal and nearly put audiences into a coma.
Branagh seems to want these Poirot films to be more like serious dramas than light-hearted sleuthing and that feels like a miscalculation. When the formula is so obviously present, a lighter touch with more sly humor would signal to the audience that Branagh realizes the tropes he is presenting.
"A Haunting in Venice" is not a badly made film. The cast is more than capable, the Venice locale is gorgeous, and the film is attractively shot in its appropriately creepy mansion. But it lacks a certain, je ne sais quoi.
Remember that scene in David Cronenberg's "The Fly" where Jeff Goldblum's scientist transports a steak in his teleportation pod and makes Geena Davis eat it? The steak looks perfectly fine but when she takes a bite she exclaims, "It tastes funny ... it tastes synthetic." That's how I feel about "A Haunting in Venice." It has all the trappings of a stylish mystery but not that delicious flavor.
Branagh's Poirot is a bit too dry and uptight to engage or charm us. And his attempts to add a dark side to Poirot's past and personality only intensifies the problem. Michelle Yeoh as the medium is a delight but she is entirely underused, and only gets to hint at some devilish fun. A jaunty Fey makes a good contrast/foil for Poirot but again their relationship and exchanges feel so predictable.
For a mystery, "A Haunting in Venice" delivers no real surprises. But if the comfort of glossy formula is what you seek then this will do.
