‘Kill the Jockey’ Review: Luis Ortega’s Surreal Descent Into the Underworld
An alcoholic jockey is locked away to clean up before the biggest race of his life. But when the plan implodes, he escapes into a world where he no longer recognizes others—or himself.
In Luis Ortega’s films—and almost as a personal philosophy—freedom isn’t just an idea, it’s the ultimate value. Far from the current, market-friendly uses of the term, the freedom his cinema pursues—and the one his characters try to live—comes from stripping away almost every bond that ties them to organized society. Whether through theft (as in El Ángel), through kidnapping and murder (the series Historia de un clan), or by simply existing on the margins (as in most of his films, including Lulu), Ortega’s characters move on a tightrope, constantly on the verge of a definitive fall.
The protagonist of Kill the Jockey, Remo Manfredini (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), might be the most extreme case of all. He’s a legendary race-horse jockey, famous for his skill and historic wins, but he’s clearly in free fall. He’s perpetually drunk, steals and takes the drugs meant for the horses, and in some races he’s barely capable of getting out of the gate. His girlfriend, Abril (the Spanish actress Ursula Corberó), also a jockey, is pregnant and has learned to tolerate his lifestyle—but she’s hanging on by a thread.
Remo works for Sirena (Mexican actor Daniel Giménez Cacho, the “Zama” of Zama), a kind of businessman-gangster hybrid who needs him clean and functional to ride an outrageously expensive horse he’s just bought in Japan, with the intention of winning the Grand Prize. To sober him up and beat his addictions, Sirena locks the couple in a shed. Remo is watched over by three goons (played by Daniel Fanego, Osmar Núñez, and Roberto Carnaghi), but they can’t stop him from getting into trouble again and again. Eventually, the big race with the Japanese horse arrives—and things, predictably, go very wrong. Disastrously wrong.
From that moment on, Kill the Jockey takes a sharp turn. Without spoiling too much, Remo escapes, becomes unrecognizable, seems to have lost all sense of self—of who he is, fundamentally—and wanders the world like a man without consciousness. Or so it seems. Meanwhile, because of what happened during and after the race, both Sirena and his henchmen set out to find him and finish him off. But they’re not the only ones. Abril, along with other strange figures from his world (curious characters played by Luis Ziembrowski, Jorge Prado and others), also join the search. And even if they do find him, it’s far from certain that Remo will know who they are—or who he is himself.
Stylistically and thematically, the film carries echoes of Aki Kaurismäki. The visual design benefits from the essential collaboration of cinematographer Timo Salminen, who shot nearly all of Kaurismäki’s films, giving El Jockey its unmistakable palette, frontal compositions, and lighting. The same goes for the dry, deadpan performances, the mix of hyperrealism and oddball eccentricity in the supporting characters, and the idiosyncratic but captivating soundtrack (a blend of pop, rock, and Argentine and Latin American melodics from the ’60s to the ’80s—everyone from Piero to Virus). Even the protagonist’s crisis has points of connection with The Man Without a Past.
But despite those references, Ortega infuses the film with his own obsessions, themes, and ideas. Kill the Jockey—written by Ortega, Fabián Casas, and Rodolfo Palacios—builds a world steeped in mysticism, tenderness, and emotional vulnerability, clearly influenced by Leonardo Favio but ultimately forged through Ortega’s own seven previous films. On top of that, he adds an unexpectedly radical formal streak: dance scenes, sex scenes, moments of absurd humor—all executed with striking visual precision and real comic force. It’s a free-spirited film, one that embraces bold formal challenges and frequently astonishes by how confidently it rises to meet them.
Kill the Jockey is full of pleasures, from the already-mentioned choreographed sequences between Corberó and Pérez Biscayart (there are more to come, including one between Corberó and the Chilean actress Mariana Di Girólamo, also playing a jockey) to the memorable quirks of each character. There’s the deceptively cordial Sirena, the enigmatic figure played by Prado, and especially the trio of bumbling thugs embodied by three legendary Argentine actors—who could almost carry a series of their own. Later on, other “gleaming” names appear, but those surprises are better left for the viewers. If you tune into the mode Ortega proposes—which isn’t difficult, though some viewers may feel unsettled by this level of freedom—the film becomes a cascade of delights, including a couple of unforgettable songs from his father, Palito Ortega.
But beyond the formal bravura and stylistic invention, what Kill the Jockey ultimately conveys through Remo’s increasingly improbable misadventures (Biscayart at the top of his game) is an irrepressible, romantic urge simply to exist—to be part of the world, to experience its most baffling mysteries without judging or overthinking them. It’s an ode to another kind of freedom, a more romantic one if you like: the freedom to veer off in the “wrong” direction, to lose consciousness, to surrender to the surprises of being alive. To live without burdens, without dead weight, without a name, without gender, maybe even without memory. To inhabit a perpetual present that feels very close to eternity.
