Film Review: "Cassandro"
Though at times underwhelming, "Cassandro" is saved by a rich, textured, and emotionally driven performance by Gael García Bernal.
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Warning: Spoilers for the film follow.
I’ve been a fan of Gael García Bernal’s for years, ever since I saw him in Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education. I’ll be the first to admit that some of this fandom is shallow; I love Bernal in part because he’s just so damn pretty. It’s more than that, though. He’s a damn fine actor, someone who is able to really excavate the complexities–both the beautiful and the ugly–of his characters, and so it’s always a pleasure to see him. I was particularly excited about the new film Cassandro, in which he appears as Saúl Armendáriz, a young man who goes on to become Cassandro, an exótico on the lucha libre circuit.
Having seen the film, I can say that it’s a solid effort, and Bernal is unsurprisingly extraordinary as Armendáriz. He radiates his usual effortless charm, giving us a young man determined to live his life on his own terms, both in the ring and outside of it. His personal life is a bit complicated, for while his mother, Yocasta (Perla De La Rosa) is unfailingly supportive, she suffers from both ill-health and a residual bitterness that his father no longer has anything to do with them. De La Rosa brings a haunting grace to the role, and her dynamic with Bernal is quite believable.
Armendáriz’s relationship with Raúl Castillo’s Gerardo, however, is more difficult and vexed. Gerardo is also a wrestler, but he has been having a secret affair with Armendáriz, despite the fact that he is married with children. There’s an undeniable physical chemistry between Bernal and Castillo, however, and their scenes together are some of the highlights of Cassandro. While Gerardo is happy to keep things as they are–and is markedly uncomfortable with the way that Armendáriz speaks about Cassandro as if he is an actual person–Armendáriz wants something more. He wants to build a life with Gerardo, and he even goes so far as to tell him that he should leave his wife and children (one senses that his desire for his lover to live openly is at least somewhat connected to his father, who was similarly married with his own family at the time that he had an affair with Yocasta).
Indeed, one of the best things about Cassandro is the extent to which it paints its title character as a man who wants to prove himself to the world. In becoming an exótico, he embraces the power of performance to give an authenticity and a transparency to his life that his personal relationships often lack. The irony, of course, is that Cassandro is nothing more than a creation, a persona that Armendáriz has donned so that he can at last have the agency that he lacks in so much of the rest of his life. When he is in the ring, he is an entirely different person; in some ways, he is just a body matched against another body, and in that there is a mysterious sort of power.
Though I really enjoyed the film, I did feel that the narrative wasn’t quite as emotionally resonant or as hefty as it should be. Moments that should have felt imbued with power are rendered so subtly that it’s only thanks to Bernal’s skill as an actor that we’re allowed to see why they matter. Arguably the most crushing of these is the moment when he returns home to find out that his mother has passed away, thus robbing him of one his most constant and enduring sources of support. In another, Gerardo tells him that they can no longer engage in their clandestine meetings, since his wife has found out. In both cases, the film keeps us at somewhat of a remove from the events and Armendáriz’s response to them, which makes his ultimate triumph feel just a little bereft of its impact.
There are two exceptions to this, however. In the first, Armendáriz learns that the house he had intended to buy for his mother has been sold, which leaves him bereft and wondering whether there is any point in continuing his career. It’s a moment of wrenching pathos, particularly given the close bond between mother and son. In an earlier scene, we saw them swimming in the pool in said house, the moment providing both a moment in which to dream about a brighter, more financially secure future.
The second moment occurs near the end of the film. Having established himself as a true star, Cassandro is interviewed by his fellow luchador El Hijo del Santo (who plays himself). During the interview, a young man from the audience stands up and, with his proud father beside him, tells Cassandro that it was thanks to him that he had the strength and the courage to come out. The admission renders Armendáriz speechless, and all he can do is tap his chest in a gesture of solidarity. It hits you right in the feels, and it’s a reminder of why representation–in wrestling as in every other field–is so vitally important.
Ultimately, Armendáriz/Cassandro has the confrontation with his father that has been lurking in the back of the film since the beginning. The two men have gone on entirely different life paths, and the former realizes that he doesn’t need the latter, that all he needs is the fame that he has attained in the ring. Though he might still be accosted with screams of “faggot” and other homophobic slurs, he also knows that he is now in control of his own destiny. For someone who has long existed at the margins of various worlds–as a Texan competing in Mexican wrestling, as a gay man participating in a sport known for its fetishizing of macho masculinity–the final scene marks his ultimate triumph. Though he has lost a great deal, it seems that, in the film’s imagination, he is now free to pursue his future unencumbered by the burdens of his past. Though somewhat underwhelmingly delivered, this is still a message of empowerment that’s worth celebrating.