It almost doesn’t feel worth reviewing Kill Jokhi
(El Jockey) after seeing it only once. It’s stylistically deceptive – the opening sequence plays its absurdity for laughs, but at one point, without telling the audience, the film decides it wants interpretation and not just information. I felt ill-equipped to understand the journey it took me then, and I’m not so ill-equipped now. But that might be the best place to capture its charms.
The titular jockey is Remo (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), whom we meet as a constant mess. He runs for a mob boss named Sirena (Daniel Giménez Cacho), and despite a past of abuse and drug abuse, he’s made a name for himself as a top talent. But he has begun to crack, while Abril (Úrsula Corberó), a fellow jockey pregnant with his child, rises in the ranks.
These first few minutes are virtuosic. Director Luis Ortega completely controls the tone, each cut and camera movement creating a rhythm that quickly puts us on the wavelength of this strange world. And the actors are all on the same page. For a moment, I wondered if I was just watching my favorite film of this year’s Venice series.
We are seeing some kind of significant change, although the extent of that change – and whether “change” is the right word – is taking time to become apparent.
Remo is approached to ride a new, expensive horse that his bosses just bought in Japan, and they are not willing to let him do it while drunk. Despite Abril’s warnings, they stop him. On race day, one thing leads to another, and Remo ends up in the hospital with a potentially life-changing head injury.
Kill The Jockey Finally Becomes A Completely Different Film
And going in with it is Adjustment
Then the story begins in earnest, and everything changes. Remo wakes up and wanders Buenos Aires, forcing gangsters to hunt him down. But he may not look like him at all. His journey is characterized by an absurdity that feels funny and mysterious. We are seeing some kind of significant change, though the extent of that change — and whether “change” is the right word — is taking time to become clear.
His physical portrayal is truly amazing, and apart from his acting to carry us through the final act, Kill Jokhi it doesn’t work.
I knew going into that Kill the Jockey it was just over 90 minutes long, but during it, I would guess an hour had passed. Part of that was certainly frustration; I couldn’t help but miss the movie I started withthen I realized that it is not coming back. The way Ortega goes about showing us his cards is another aspect. But even if I couldn’t do a simple job of the film and my feelings about it, I was still amazed by it.
The actors deserve real credit for that, especially Biscayart. His physical portrayal is truly amazing, and apart from his acting to carry us through the final act, Kill the Jockey it doesn’t work. But before that, too, my marriage used to depend on his Keatonesque eyes trying to tell me something important about all this strangeness.
In an interview here in Venice with another critic who liked it Kill the Jockey under what I did, he argued that it did too much. If everything is so strange, he said nothing is something. When he said it, something pressed me. I responded that, given the film’s overarching themes, that might be the point.
Kill the Jockey premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film is 96 minutes long and has not been rated.