Review: GLORIA, An Unrestrained Biopic Starring A Poor, Innocent Soul

Mexican pop star Gloria Trevi is the subject of a biopic that features the typical rise and fall of the protagonist, but that works too as a variation, thanks to the nature of the story.

This means Gloria's rise and fall actually began at the same time, once she got to know Sergio Andrade, her eventual manager, basically the love of her life, and a real asshole too.

In terms of structure, the movie plays with time, showing the decadent times of both Trevi and Andrade right from the beginning, as it jumps from Mexico City in the eighties and early nineties to Brazil in the late nighties throughout, Brazil being the place where the police finally captured and incarcerated both of them. It's not the prettiest story for a popular icon, indeed.

The film recreates nicely some of Trevi's most famous moments -- including a TV presentation that went a little out of control -- with young actress Sofía Espinosa delivering a noteworthy performance.

Trevi had no restraints and here her wild side is well represented. But so is the kitsch aspect of her work. Like Cantinflas, another recent Mexican biopic, Gloria has several cameos of personalities in the Mexican entertainment business. Anyone who has been influenced by Mexican pop culture will easily recognize Paty Chapoy and Raul Velasco, who represent the two major TV networks of Mexico, both very important for Trevi's career. These characterizations add to the kitsch element, as well as the actual scenes (i.e. a musical moment with Trevi singing like crazy and out of nowhere during a meeting with the TV people), but Chapoy also plays an important role in Trevi's eventual downfall.

While Gloria features a good amount of music-related moments, it really functions as a straight drama that shows without restraint the ugly side of the protagonists' life. Well, there's only one restraint: it portrays Gloria Trevi as a poor innocent soul who was blinded by love.

Let me put it this way: there's one scene near the ending in which Trevi says to the sick pederast that Andrade really is something like, "These are 14-year-old girls, that's enough, you're not the same as before."

By that time, however, Gloria had already witnessed all kinds of actions that proved Andrade was rather insane, including his abuse of power in show business with young aspiring female stars, physical violence against the girls, etc. Trevi remained quiet out of her unconditional love for Andrade, apparently, and really the film is way too nice with her. She is depicted as a faithful woman who didn't see beyond Andrade and eventually found her redemption.

With that said, the performance of Marco Pérez as Andrade is not as one-dimensional as the Trevi character. In fact, this man is quite fun to watch. While there are no drugs involved in the movie, it feels at times like a story of junkies with cocaine-infused messy times. In terms of acting, Pérez, who you might recall for playing Gael García's brother in Amores Perros, definitely steals the show. It's a magnificent performance, in fact, with Andrade being portrayed as a great talent detector but like I said, not even the earliest moments of music composition between the two are pure.

Ultimately, if you can deal with the fact that Gloria, even if it's not an "authorized biopic," still works for Trevi, you come to realize it's actually a pretty decent movie. It subtly celebrates that Trevi wasn't found guilty and is not really a biopic that I can take seriously, even if it wants to be dead serious for the most part, but hell, it should have been a whole lot worse given the subject matter. At least we have the first terrific performance of the year by a Mexican actor (Pérez, certainly).

Gloria opens in Mexico on Thursday, January 1 and in the United States on Friday, February 20 (via Picturehouse).