In the macho world of Mexican lucha libre wrestling, “exóticos” are male fighters who compete in drag. Mostly they are straight, but this heartfelt and sweet drama based on real events tells the story of Saúl Armendáriz, an openly gay wrestler who shot to fame as an exótico in the early 90s. It gives Gael García Bernal his best role in years: Saúl is funny, infectiously upbeat, sometimes heartbreakingly vulnerable. He radiates the kind of magnetism that made him a world cinema it-boy in the early 00s (notably in another cross-dressing role: Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education).
Bernal’s Saúl begins his wrestling career using a male alter ego, El Topo. As everyone knows, wrestling is rigged, and since Saúl is slightly built he is forever cast as the “runt” in fights, the character ordered by promoters to lose against wardrobe-sized men with names such as Gigántico (played here by a real-life wrestler scarily named Murder Clown). It’s Saúl’s trainer Sabrina (Roberta Colindrez) – a female wrestler, an outsider too – who suggests he fights as an exótico. At first Saúl is not keen; for a start, exóticos always lose as well.
