THE STORY – A journey to Michoacán’s hypermasculine rodeos descends into the subconscious of memory, queer desire, and longing, leading to a reckoning with the wounds and beauty of a home left behind.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig (Directors)
THE RUNNING TIME – 70 Minutes
Too many documentaries, even very good ones, follow a standard and easily replicable structure. How many times have we seen a non-fiction film constructed from archival footage, intercut with contemporary talking head interviews? It’s a formula that works effectively at conveying information, which is generally what documentaries aim to do. On paper, “Jaripeo,” the new documentary from directors Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig, seems to do what many such films have done before: delve into a specific, niche subculture and bring wider attention to its practices, customs, and traditions. But the approach the directing team takes is what makes “Jaripeo” so fascinating. Rather than merely pointing a camera at an underexplored topic, they focus on the feelings and experiences of the people involved in the world they’re covering, and they visualize these intangible elements in creative, striking ways.
The title refers to a type of rodeo show popular in Latin America, particularly focused on bull riding. The film explores jaripeo shows in the Mexican state of Michoacán and, more specifically, examines the queer folk who frequent the exhibitions as bull riders, patrons, and performers. Like so many other examples of male-dominated physical activity, the jaripeo world is predominantly hypermasculine and heterosexual, at least on the surface. As epitomized by this documentary’s subjects, plenty of those involved defy this stereotype. The interviewees include an openly gay ranchero, a proudly feminine regular attendee, a man who performs at the events in drag, and the co-director, Efraín Mojica.
They’re all given a chance to tell their stories and share their feelings about gender standards and how they move through the world as members of the queer community. They have vastly different circumstances, with the love of jaripeo as one of the few unifying factors among them. As is often the case, despite a specific, overpowering image that seems to define an activity – in this instance, the aggressive machismo of the rodeo – there’s nothing totally uniform about those involved in it. Still, the pressure of societal expectation weighs on them all; they just react to it differently. Some bend to it and conform, while some gleefully push against it. Curiously, one of the more common topics that nearly everyone interviewed talks about is the fact that more men than may be obvious are queer in the jaripeo scene. This only further accentuates the film’s quiet exploration of the performance of gender and sexual expectation.
Similarly, the filmmakers buck typical documentary techniques in the construction of their film. This shows in small ways, such as the atypical framing of the interviews (the camerawork is more interested in other parts of their bodies than their faces, like their hands and their belt area), and in more obvious choices. The most predominant of these filmmaking flourishes are the imaginative sequences that visualize and represent the interview subjects’ experiences abstractly. These are constructed in ultra-creative ways, making bold use of unnatural lighting, evocative camera angles, and showy editing tactics. The editing, in particular, works incredibly effectively in giving the film a dreamy, hazy mood that feels appropriate given the many stories of nighttime cruising and surreptitious dalliances. The synth-based music and changes in the appearance of the film stock further fragment the documentary away from real life, mirroring the feeling of an unreal, welcoming fantasy world that some of the closeted queer men long to live in. These segments more closely resemble video art that might be found in a modern art museum than something usually seen in a documentary. The segments all have a different energy: some are sexy, some are scary, and some are fabulous. They give the film the impression of a giant montage, as much of it is composed of wordless, moody pieces. But the effect is impressive, with the directors creating some truly beautiful screen images.
Clearly, the filmmaking team is uninterested in telling their chosen story conventionally. This is far from an objective, Wikipedia-like recounting of the modern-day jaripeo scene. Instead, it’s more focused on the feelings and anecdotal experiences of the queer folk who have made the jaripeo a major part of their lives. As such, “Jaripeo” is unlike most other documentaries, capturing the essence of its subject and transporting audiences from all over the world to the specific place it covers.
