El fantástico mundo de Juan Orol, 2012.
Directed by Sebastian del Amo.
Starring Roberto Sosa, Gabriela de la Garza, Mauricio Galaz, Roger Cudney, Karin Burnett, Alfonso Borbolla and Juan Manuel Bernal.
SYNOPSIS:
A highly-stylized biopic chronicling the life of the Hispanic B-movie legend, Juan Orol.
Many biopics act as a love-letter of sorts to the person whose life they are depicting. However, there aren’t too many that act as a love-letter to the particular culture surrounding that subject. El fantástico mundo de Juan Orol (The Fantastic World of Juan Orol) is definitely one of the latter, using Orol’s life-story as a means to showcase the neglected side of Spanish-speaking cinema and culture.
As part of this year’s ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival, the film’s premiere screening was preceded by a one-hour introductory talk about popular Mexican cinema. In front of a small audience in the Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester, the talk was hosted by university lecturer and world cinema authority Dr. Andy Willis. Exploring the roots of conventional Mexican cinema, the lecture was the perfect companion-piece to the film, and yet another example of the well-organised events this year’s festival has to offer.
If the one-hour talk introduced the audience to the conventions of popular Mexican cinema, then delves deeper to celebrate them. Of course, the story follows much of Orol’s early life, predating his arrival into show-business (he originally tried to form careers in baseball, boxing and bullfighting), but the film doesn’t really hit its stride until he makes his directional debut.
Orol finds himself right in the middle of Mexico’s ‘Golden Age’ of cinema, and thanks to some excellent direction and set-design so do we. Even in black and white, the glamour of the era explodes off the screen in dramatic style. It’s a dizzying effect, made all the more encompassing when entwined with reconstructed clips of Orol’s own films.
For those not familiar with the actual filmmaker, Orol has become known as the ‘accidental surrealist’, because his films were so ‘bad’ that they were unintentionally surreal. I must confess, I’ve seen very little of the directors original films, but judging from the way they are lovingly recreated here, they clearly hold a dear place in the hearts of many people, including the filmmakers of this biopic.
El fantástico mundo de Juan Orol is a well-structured, technically-sound film, and probably unlike any biopic you’ve seen before. The filmmakers have made the bold, but effective decision to saturate the film with the ‘surrealism’ that made Orol so fascinating. The result is a stylish and enjoyable adventure which you can easily forget is actually based on a real human being. There is clearly a lot of admiration for Orol himself, but the real love-letter here is addressed to the glitzy time-period itself. The clue is in the title: it’s the Orol’s ‘world’ that is fantastic, not necessarily the man himself.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Jackson Ball – follow me on Twitter.
Originally published March 14, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
