Cassandro The Exotica is a 49 year old gay Mexican Lucha Libre that stands just just 5’5′ in his glittery outrageous costumes, but what he lacks in size , he makes up with his giant ego. This documentary on him was made by French filmmaker Marie Losier on 16 mm mainly using a (shaky) hand held camera and was nominated for a Queer Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
It’s probably a little too affectionate a profile and Losier would have been much better digging in deeper into the crevices of this poor boy from El Paso who turned his life around to be a star. Now with Cassandro reaching what should be the end of his wrestling career, he is determined to continue even though he has damaged his body so much over the years. It has resulted in countless surgeries that not a single days goes by when he is not in some severe pain.
Lucha Libre is as much a performance art as it is a wrestling match. Actually to the casual observer seeing all the flamboyant costumes and masks it looks exactly like some sort of gay mardi gras event. However It is far from that and the sport is racked with homophobia and it is to his credit that Cassandro never stopped fighting back all the time. He refused to accept all the taunta and outright setbacks, to not overcome them all, but now be completely accepted as both their leader and champion.
There is no secret that all the matches are carefully staged and well-rehearsed dramas but because of all of Cassandro’s catastrophic injuries, it is a system that seems to fail far too often. Cassandro himself offered no explanation to why he got hurt so frequently , and Loisir failed to tackle the very obviously glaring question.
Cassandro is a disarmingly charming man whose 26 years in the ring have hardly brought him great wealth, but he seems content that as long as his bouffant hair is perfectly coiffed and his costumes have the longest trains and his fans still scream for him , then he is happy.
There is no hint of any personal relationships or him ever wanting to deal with the reality that the very thing that has giving him so much happiness, will probably be the thing that kills him in the not too distant future.
Labels: 2019, documentary
