By M. Sellers Johnson.
How do you go through the scenes in life, with what face, with what attitude? It’s really something you can’t choose. You think you can choose but you can’t.”
-Luis Ortega
From perceptive newcomers like Tomás Gómez Bustillo to internationally regarded directors such as Lucretia Martel and Damián Szifron, Argentina’s rich national cinema industry continues to boast an array of confident artistic creatives. Over twenty years ago, one such artist arrived on the scene with his acclaimed debut feature La Caja Negra [Black Box] (2002). At the bright age of 19, Luis Ortega established himself as a burgeoning filmmaker, receiving a handful of nominations from the Argentine Film Critics Association. Ortega’s work has since encapsulated a variety of independent films, television episodes, and the true crime commercial giant El Angel (2018). With his new feature, El Jockey/Kill the Jockey (2024), co-produced by Benicio del Toro, set to release in the United States in early July, Ortega maintains an assured artistic voice in this feisty genre-defying story, where ambiguities in gender, ego, and salvation clash in a delirious display of audacious self-exploration and spiritual renewal.
The story follows the exploits of the famed, hedonistic jockey Remo, played with brilliant range by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart. After an injurious crash spoil both a prized horse and a gambling investment, mobster Rubén Sirena (Daniel Giménez Cacho) pursues Remo with an odd fatherly reproach, while his fellow racer Abril (Úrsula Corberó Delgado) soberly doubts their relationship, in light of her recent pregnancy. With the world closing in, Remo (now “Lola”) awakens in the hospital with an ambivalent, albeit renewed identity that challenges and reorients the forces that contend with the “Remo” that once was. In his film, Ortega blends queer attitudes, cheeky romp, and bizarre eurythmics of aesthetic exercise with thoughtful musings on the fluidity of identity and the ever-changing self. The narrative caper that ensues is more than just cheeky sports comedy. Crucially, the jaunty spirit of Kill the Jockey is encased in themes of rebirth, transhuman experience, and vindication through unflinching expressivity.
In a sit down with Ortega, he shares thoughts on artistic collaboration, intuitive process, Abel Ferrara’s 1992 masterwork Bad Lieutenant, and the beauty of faces.
Your curiously provocative film is the result of collaboration with other great Argentine creatives. You co-wrote the script with Fabian Casas who has famously worked with fellow Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso. And you two have even worked with the same DP, Timo Salminen, on your most recent projects. How does collaboration inform your process as a filmmaker?
In cinema, it’s a key thing, you know? I also paint, because it’s something I like and it’s creative. I always wanted to be a painter, because you don’t need anyone or anything. Though, the nice part about cinema is that you do need people. It’s really interesting how most directors don’t really spend much time outside of their work. You live through your films, and you have relationships because you do films. All of your love stories come from your friends and partners because you make films. It just becomes a way of life. So, in cinema collaboration is a key thing. You need a really cool DP, like Timo. You need the best musicians or if the music is already made, then great. In our film, we used a lot of Argentinian pop songs. My father is a musician (Palito Ortega), and we used some of his music (two or three songs) for the film. You need to hang around cool people who are in love with life and the idea of making something out of experience. So, there’s no way that you could make a film on your own.
I worked with the other writer Rodolfo Palacios, who was with me on my other film El Angel (2018). It was just a really loving experience to share. Fabian Casas is less of a screenwriter and primarily a novelist and a poet. And it’s interesting because screenwriters aren’t really my thing. I like people who are all over the place and have ideas and deal with all of these emotions. I don’t use the traditional (whatever the “traditional” is) Syd Field book on how to write a screenplay. So, Fabian Casas is a poet, and Rodolfo Palacios is a writer and also a journalist who has worked with a lot of crime stories. He’ll often interview the criminals, to get information. He did this big book on a bank robbery, interviewing all the people involved. He just has another point of view to add. So, it’s a key thing, in film, to find the right people. The people you want to hang around with for a couple of years.
In your director’s note, you mention “the clash between the inner world and the outer world.” As Lola embarks on a chaotic, spirited journey of self-discovery, they experience rebirth spiritually, emotionally, and literally. What does Lola’s personal journey mean to you?
Well, I’m about to be forty-five years old, and when you’re younger you think you’re going to learn something, at one point, and that never really happens. You think you’re going to figure yourself out at some point. And at this point, I just gave up on trying to understand myself and all that identity bullshit, that you’re going to know who you are at some point. I think that applies to anyone. Like, you see your father and you think “Who the hell is this guy?” and he doesn’t know, so you can’t ask him. I had a child on the way while I was writing the film, and I was very haunted about being a father. What kind of father was I going to be? So, I put that in the film, also, and then I had this idea (or this nightmare) that I would die before he was born and then maybe reincarnate in my son. This fantasy thing. But basically, you have a character whether you like it or not. It can be, more or less, like yourself. People build up a character that may be just a mask. Other people maybe build the mask that has to do with their soul, or who they are. And I guess that’s as close to being honest as you can get, but you still need that physical aspect. How do you go through the scenes in life, with what face, with what attitude? It’s really something you can’t choose. You think you can choose but you can’t.
So, the character goes through all these other characters. He’s a jockey, he’s a drug addict, and then he becomes this guy person walking around the street. He goes through different characters, basically just to try to find something out. After he has his accident, he forgets everything and starts over again. Going through this experience that I like calling the “pure vision.” So, he hits his head, loses his character, and when he wakes up in the hospital there’s a lady in a coma lying next to him and he puts on her clothes. Then as he walks through the streets just wandering, like a drifter, and kind of becomes this woman. But then he falls into the trap again because then he adopts another character: from the jockey and the drug addict to the drifter and the lady. And as I was writing it, I came to the conclusion that you actually have to kill all your characters to be yourself. But then, there is no such thing as yourself, either. It’s like a ghost game that we’re trying to figure out. It’s a personal experience that (I guess) anyone can relate to, or something that we all go through. It was my way of putting that in the film.
In the end, I like this idea that you go through all these experiences, but you never know what’s going on, no matter what character you choose. No matter how sure of yourself you look, feel, or act. You still don’t know what’s going on. And that can bring some panic, or it can bring some amusement of going through life without knowing what the hell’s going on. Why does life have the need for people to impersonate? It’s not this abstract thing, it’s just you need to impersonate it. While that can be a trap, you can also have fun with that. So, I tried to put that in the film and of course, there’s a lot of humor too.
Maybe we can all relax with the psychedelic experience that doesn’t provide us with any true knowledge.”
-Luis Ortega
Are there any particular themes in the film that you hope to evoke with audiences?
Honestly, I’m not into themes and I’m not even into the identity theme, it just came across. And when you have to talk about the film, you really wish you didn’t have to. I guess some people seen the identity thing, and it applies, it does touch that theme. But in my films, I don’t like working with genre. At least not one genre—maybe all of them put together, or whatever comes up in each scene. I’m not a person who can work with themes, it just comes out and it becomes obvious that, yeah, it does have to do with the question of “Who the hell are we and what are we doing?” But, no I don’t really have a message. I’m not into messages either. I just like the psychedelic experience, and I think it’s amazing. I guess if you put it out there, then maybe we can all relax with the psychedelic experience that doesn’t provide us with any true knowledge. You know, just keep calm and try and stay away from the psychiatric hospital. But I also like to get close to the psychiatric hospital because maybe that’s where some true things happen.
The goal is just to walk through the fire and not kill yourself or get into trouble. But I like to walk that line because that’s where I think real things are happening. That’s the whole point about making films, you don’t get involved too much with the social part of the world. You forget about paying taxes or going to all these social things, which you do have to do at some point to secure money for the film. You just have to build your own world. But I don’t have anything specific that I want the audience to get from the film. Just to get as close to life as possible.
There is such an expressivity in the eyes of each of the characters—not to mention Lola’s peculiarly dilated eye. What was the significance of eyes, for your film?
I just can’t believe the eyes. Often, I can’t talk to people looking at their eyes, because it’s too distracting. It’s too deep, too indecipherable. You look at people’s eyes and it’s so beautiful. You can get so lost in people’s eyes. Though I’m not keen on traveling, I always feel the best view for me is a human face. That’s as good as it gets. Or my dog’s face, or my cat’s face. I just love faces. They’re, like, very trippy. The eyes, the face, the expression, it’s so beautiful—even when it’s not beautiful and it’s freaky. Like, when you sit in the subway, and you see all these faces and people that don’t know what the hell is going on. They’re just going to work, or something. And I love that.
I mean, the narrative is necessary. You need a little plot or storyline, but I’m more into faces and human expression. Of course, you can only go so far with that unless you’re [Ingmar] Bergman, or something. But even he needed a story. Everyone needs a little story to get from one place to the other, but I’m more into the experience overall. The eyes, the faces, and the creature aspect of the experience.
Jorge Prado has a mysterious presence as the Hombre Misterioso. What can you share about his character? Is he also the mysterious man in the story that Sirena (Daniel Giménez Cacho) tells Abril (Úrsula Corberó)?
They are. You’re probably one of the few people that caught that. When I was really young, I used to live in this place called Tucumán, in the mountains, and there was his really bad cop, this kind of sheriff guy. His name was Malevo Ferreyra. They called him “Malevo” which is like “bad guy.” He was really fucked up. If he caught you stealing a chicken or something, he would shoot you and then put a gun in your hand. He would mask those crimes. It was a really small town, in the smallest state in Argentina. So, we were all freaking out with this sheriff. I was eleven or twelve, and we lived in a kind of wild state with mountains and such, so it wasn’t too strange to carry guns or steal someone’s gun. You’re eleven/twelve and carry guns around in case you bump into this asshole. And he’s exactly as I portrayed him in the film. I used the same shirt, same pants, same mustache, and sideburns, everything. Finally, he was on the run because he killed so many people and he went up this water tank surrounded by reporters and cops. He shot himself on live TV and that was the end of him. But when I was a kid, Malevo always around and he was mean. I used his image because he used to haunt us when we were kids and this guy came to mind so I just put him in the film, exactly how he looked. His clothes, his hat. I don’t know, I just brought him there, but I didn’t want to explain too much. Because, I think when you explain too much you lose the real spirit of life. In life, you don’t have all those explanations.
Would you be willing to share anything about your next feature, Magnetizado?
Magnetizado is a book about the true story of the guy (it’s like the opposite of Taxi Driver), this passenger who killed taxi drivers in Buenos Aires in the 1980s. He never knew why he was doing it. At one point, he went to this restaurant that was full of taxi drivers and when he was eating in the canteen he tried to let go of the fork and knife and couldn’t. They were stuck to his hands; they were magnetized. While there was this really cool book, I also had my own story about this priest who falls in love with an actress, and they have this really crazy relationship. She smokes crack and gives some to the priest, and then he starts to give these wild sermons. He gets really excited and gets to God this way. He is this religious guy who falls in love with this woman who really drives him crazy. They get into this drug-fueled kind of delusional relationship. But one day she disappears, and he goes crazy.
At this point, I met with the book. The author was a really cool guy who died a few years ago and I met with his family who really wanted me to adapt the book. They had a lot of offers but wanted me to do this book. I had this other story, but I thought of bringing the two stories together. So, half of the film is this story I had, and I got this other influence from the book. I liked this idea of being magnetized. That explains a lot (if you want) of what you’re magnetized to and the people you attract. I grabbed this concept of being magnetized and just used it for the whole film. It’s like a Bad Lieutenant, but he’s a priest. Maybe even a little Punch-Drunk Love. I don’t know, they always ask you for references and then you don’t know what to say, but then I thought of these two films.
It is a love story, basically. But a crazy love story, where the characters are completely crazy. There are a lot of narcotics and corruption here, that I felt had something to do with Bad Lieutenant, which is a really cool film.
M. Sellers Johnson is an independent scholar and editor whose research interests include French art cinema, transnationalism, historiography, and aesthetics. He received his MA from Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington) in 2021 and his BA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2018. His work has appeared in Afterimage, Film International, Film Quarterly, Media Peripheries, Mise-en-scène, Offscreen, and sabah ülkesi, among other outlets. He is the founding Citation Ethics Editor for Film Matters, and the current Book Reviews Editor for New Review of Film and Television Studies.