jesahumada

Tengo Miedo Torero (2020)

A frantic game of gazes between tyranny and revolt.

Tengo Miedo Torero -or My Tender Matador-, based on the only novel by Chilean writer and activist Pedro Lemebel, explores in an acute and moving way without falling into caricature, the life of a poor and marginalized transvestite -La Loca del Frente- and his relationship with a young Mexican guerrilla combatant exiled in Cuba -Carlos-, in the middle of a tumultuous city of Santiago besieged by protests against the Pinochet dictatorship and the repression of the military forces. The director Rodrigo Sepúlveda puts together a perfect puzzle in which converge characters of extreme crudeness, police events of violent drama, childhood anecdotes, songs and sayings of popular culture, landscapes of rural Chile and the fight for sexual and political freedom, between clandestine encounters and bullets. Tengo Miedo Torero is a masterpiece that has become an essential part of the new era of Latin American cinema.