The website for the Toronto International Film Festival has an entry from a new wrestling-related movie titled “Bleak Street” or “La Calle De La Amargura.” It premiered at the festival last week. The movieis based on the 2009 murders of Alberto and Alejandro Jiménez, a pair of brothers and mini luchadores best known as La Parkita (mini La Parka) and Espectrito Jr. Women posing as prostitutes lured them to a hotel room where they drugged the brothers’ drinks and intended to rob them while they were unconscious. Not accounting for their size relative to the men they normally targeted, the men overdosed and died. Police tracked down the two women, who were convicted a year later and each sentenced to 47 years in prison.
The film festival’s site summarizes the plot as follows:
The 2009 deaths of fraternal wrestlers La Parkita and Espectrito Jr. made headlines all over Mexico. These miniluchadores — little people who function as mascots for their hulking counterparts — were drugged by two women in a Cuauhtémoc hotel. The women only meant to knock out the brothers and take their money, but the doses were misjudged, and the robbery turned into murder.
As reimagined by scenarist Paz Alicia Garciadiego, Ripstein’s wife and long-time collaborator, this sensationalistic news item becomes a platform for a series of engrossing character studies through which we get to know the brothers and their two killers. Sketching the events just before and after that fateful night in the hotel, the film conducts a wry examination of Mexico City’s marginalized, whether they be exploited entertainers with threadbare costumes or aging sex workers trying to earn enough to support their dependents.
The Hollywood Reporter reviewed the movie after the Venice Film Festival, lauding the cinematography but not necessarily the character building in th writing.
