There is nothing more fun that making a film about the craziness of making films. That is exactly what Mexican director Emiliano Rocha Minter does in his wild satiric escapade “La Pecula,” or, if you prefer in English, “The Wig.” Perhaps it sounds like a French farce or British Restoration comedy, but it is highly entertaining joy ride with all the stops pulled out. For all of its short 65-minute length, it is a barrel of laughs and an unexpected addition to this year’s Hola México Film Festival at the Regal Cinemas L.A. Live.
At the center is a wannabe serious film director named Silvestre (played by Gabino Rodríguez) who for seven years has been trying to make a three-hour epic about Benito Juárez. He has been completely unable to get the money needed for his dream project. We first meet Silvestre in a small unnamed town in México, trying to find his way to met a man named Ricky
Silvestre has contacted this Mexican millionaire Ricky, who has invited him to his country estate to pitch the project. Little does he know what he is getting into. Apparently, this “Ricky” has its own ideas about films. Arriving at a dusty bus stop in rural Mexico, Silvestre starts walking down a deserted road toward the estate in the country. All of a sudden, a beat-up truck passes him and stops. The driver Barnabé, who is none other by Silverio Palacios, offers to give him a ride to Ricky’s estate, but only after playing a practical joke on Silvestre. He tells Silverio that his destination is a rather strange place and leaves him at the big wooden entry gate to the estate.
Silvestre knocks several times and eventually the gate swings open but the place looks deserted. The main house seems a bit ruined and Silvestre wanders out past a swimming pool to a surreal patio garden. There he finds a man asleep in a hammock. This man suddenly awakens and pops up stark naked and quizzes Silvestre about his reason for being there. The spry, older man is a nudist and proudly so, and carries on a nonsensical conversation about his name – which is Ricardo and not Ricky. But this is not the millionaire Ricky who Silvestre wants to meet. The nudist Ricardo offers Silvestre breakfast on the patio where a female servant suddenly appears. Ricardo has a voracious appetite for food and sex, and after eating a little, he jumps at the opportunity to have sex with the female servant – right on the breakfast table. This is only the beginning of the antics we will experience in this farcical estate.
After Ricardo decides to dive into the swimming pool, naked of course, he takes Silvestre to the front entry of the estate where interestingly odd collection of pretty gay boys and charming Mexican girls are awaiting the arrival of the estate’s owner, Ricky.
In this surreal country estate, sexual freedom seems to the norm. A young woman named Carmela (María Evoli) takes charge of accommodating Silvestre and suggested that he would be more charming with a big blond wig she says is said to have belonged to a 19th-century Florentine poet. Once she puts the wig on his head, he wears it for the rest of the movie. His hope of getting money for his film project seems to be lost in the madcap scene that unfolds.
As the nudist Ricardo prances around, the estate owner Ricky finally arrives. He is nothing other than Luis Gerardo Méndez with his hair dyed blonde. Méndez is one of Mexico’s biggest stars and lead role in NARCOS: MEXICO and playing the lead role and executive producing Netflix’s first Spanish-language original comedy series CLUB DE CUERVOS. Obvious, he wanted to be part of this zany film and seems, like the other actors, to have thoroughly enjoyed making it. Ricky is sexually amphibious in his sexual tastes, but enjoying kissing and fondling the pretty gay boys in the receiving party at his estate. He pontificates about the strange freedom of his estate and promises food and drink and a good time. Silvestre is amazed to find his ex-girlfriend there and a Ricky’s lawyer Lorenzo (played by Daniel Giménez Cacho, a well-known actor and the director to the film JUANA). Lorenzo gets a bit long-winded, talking about Silvestre’s recent divorce from his wife.
Ricky is completely charmed by Silvestre’s blonde hair. The wig becomes the center of the scene in the rest of the film. With mischievous shifts in format and tone, the escapades at Ricky’s estate go on. Silvestre has his 300-page shift for the proposed Benito Juarez film with him but that seems to be little interest to the group at Ricky’s estate. The film world is often one of promotion and self-aggrandizement and that is clearly satirized here. Minter turns his twisted meta-comedy in a series of cinematic pranks where the ugly realities of money, ego, and recycled movie plots are the name of the game. At the end of “La Pecula,” we see what Ricky the investor might do to Silvestre’s dream project – complete with special effects and AI-type images of Juarez’s life from childhood to fame – all tongue-in-cheek, but cognizant that Juarez was Mexico’s first indigenous President.
“La Pecula” is a highly entertaining satire and a fun celebration of Mexico’s ability to laugh at the crazy excesses of the entertainment business. Certainly, a surprise to find a film like this at a film festival, but it was a joy to see actors having so much fun with their craft pushed to edges of humor.
