Luis Ortega’s Kill the Jockey is a visionary take on the sports drama genre that will take the audience on a once in a lifetime adventure.
Director: Luis Ortega
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 97′
Venice World Premiere: August 29, 2024
Release Date: TBA
“He seems lost in time and space,” says one of the characters in Kill the Jockey (El Jockey) when talking about the protagonist. This is easily the best way to describe the main character, with his erratic behaviour and tendency to disappear right before our eyes. He is our way into the story for the most part and yet he remains an unsolved mystery by the time the film ends.
Remo (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, of Persian Lessons) might be hard to understand and fully grasp as a character, but he also manages to draw the audience to his side from the very beginning of the movie.
Kill the Jockey starts like any other sports film would: with the sport in question. At the beginning of the movie, jockeys Abril (Úrsula Corberó, of Lift) and Remo both compete in a race that sees Abril as the winner while Remo falls significantly behind, his performance hindered by his abuse of alcohol. The win still seems like a promising start for Abril’s career, but this may soon change. In her personal life, she is torn between the sport and starting a family with Remo. The latter, on the other hand, is told in no uncertain terms that he has to start winning again if he wants to remain in the graces of Sirena (Daniel Gliménez Cacho), the powerful mobster both characters race for.
Just when Remo finally wins a race, everything comes crumbling down, as he loses control and accidentally kills a valuable racehorse. Remo is also severely injured in the process, but Sirena is still determined to track him down after he disappears from the hospital and make him pay for the damage he caused. While the danger is real, this opens up a whole new world for Remo when he walks down the streets of Buenos Aires. In fact, it quite literally feels like Remo is being given a second chance at life in Kill the Jockey. He survives the accident that could have been fatal and lives in this dream-like, erratic state that characterises him.
Remo’s new life also involves a physical transformation, as he adopts an entirely new look and truly transforms into a new person. The change is particularly drastic in Kill the Jockey: Remo becomes a woman after his injury, or perhaps is finally able to evolve into the person they have always been, now free from the pressures of society and those around them. While this element could have been explored a little bit more, it is still very fascinating to see Remo’s transition and the exploration of this new identity.
It is in many ways a rebirth, which allows Remo to free himself from societal prejudices and norms – he is seen urinating in public and stealing a woman’s coat from the hospital – finally living exclusively for himself, maybe for the first time in his life. Abril goes through a similar, only less dramatic, growth in Kill the Jockey; she too has to learn how to put herself first in every decision that she makes. In this sense, both Abril and Remo are given a second chance which seems to involve motherhood in one way or another in their respective narratives. Whether it is in a less conventional but still valid way or more traditionally, each character eventually finds the family they had been looking for – or rather, it finds them.
With its visionary and sometimes hard-to-follow style and narrative, Kill the Jockey may seem frustrating at first. But it is a lot more intelligible once we figure out that the main character is the key to interpreting this film and its daring visual style, as we follow him on an unconventional chase across the city. At the same time, it is easy to imagine how this visionary approach may at times feel too much. There are moments where it feels entirely too artificial or self-referential, in a movie that seems to value style and look over substance and plot at any given moment.
Despite its faults, I have no doubt that there is an audience for Kill the Jockey out there. Its visual style will certainly be appreciated by the viewers who are bound to find its unique aesthetic fascinating and unusual. At the same time, its audience does seem somewhat niche as I wonder how the general public outside of the film festival scene might react to this film. One thing is for certain: no sports drama will ever be like Kill the Jockey, or even come close to it, thanks to the successful mixture of the film’s visionary style and the wholly unique journey its characters go through.
Kill the Jockey (El Jockey) had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 29, 2024. Read our list of films to watch at the 2024 Venice Film Festival!
