Hells yeah! After Kneecap this year, I wanted more time with some eff you punk rockers throwing middle fingers to the system. So naturally, we would go to…Cuba? With The Peanut Butter Falcon guys?! It’s not a seamless fit, but Los Frikis boldly merges two seemingly conflicting film genres into one, bigger story, giving a long runway for a group of people that have mostly passed on by 2024.
We’re in 1991 in Havana. Fidel Castro in a Beaumont move has banned rock & roll (and all “American” music) from the country. But that gives rise to Paco (Hector Medina) and Los Frikis, a punk rock underground group that bravely ignores this encroachment on their freedom of expression, worshipped by people like Gustavo (Eros de la Puente), Paco’s younger brother. Anything that attracts “undesirables” is going to have all sorts of people, including gay people and drug abusers. E.G…an outbreak of HIV. A positive diagnosis is basically a death sentence in 1991, and many of Los Frikis get sent away to hospice camps outside the city, run by people like Maria (Adria Arjona) who want to help care for these unfortunate souls as HIV turns to AIDS inside them.
The first half of Los Frikis is the more interesting story: detailing how underground movements work inside a fascist regime. Music is a driving force of that change, as the impressionable Gustavo learns of people like Mick Jagger and Kurt Cobain through the older, world wiser Paco, who thrills the Frikis with his crazy late night shows. Also driving that change is the collapse of the USSR, and in turn, Cuba’s economy. The already pissed of kids get even more angry when they can’t eat for days, resorting to, um, horrifying means of nutrition to pet lovers everywhere. A life on the fringes in constant desperation leads to only two places: giving up/fleeing or death of either the body or the soul. Yikes! Poor Gustavo watches helplessly as his hero Paco starts seeking happiness through non-musical means, and in turn, losing that anger and clear purpose driving him to be the musician Paco wants to be. If it were me Los Frikis would be mostly about these Havana nights, and the constant addition and subtraction of people from this world, either by force, or by HIV, and the complications of being in this specific movement at this specific time.
However, that’s only half of Los Frikis’s story. Director Tyler Nilson wants to show what happens to Los Frikis on these remote farms/care centers. It’s in this part of the movie that the emotions really come to the fore, as we transition from raging against the machine to…what exactly? That’s the key question Nilson wants to explore with this half of the movie. People like Gustavo and Maria, who were aimless before ending up where they do, find their life’s purpose, rousing the audience into big smiles. Conversely, all that anger and range from people like Paco transforms into yearning for a life cut short too soon, welling the audience’s eyes with tears. The balancing act doesn’t quite work, as Adria Arjona’s superstar presence leads to a see saw between the story before the farm and the story in the farm. But the acting is so committed that our trio of leads really sell the story Nilson has set in front of them, as their characters would feel as new experiences, good, and bad, slowly evolving who they are and leading to an honest, mostly satisfying ending.
Los Frikis is gonna make you laugh a little, cry a little, smile a little, you get the idea. I do believe though the ending message is one of optimism. Here’s why: on one of the sets, a dog just showed up and wouldn’t leave, ending up in the background and sometimes foreground of many scenes. After screening the movie to some Los Frikis descendants, one of them came up to director Tyler Nilson and told him that that was the spirit of their relative, happy to have his story finally told. Even my cynical critic heart melted when I hear stuff like that, and I hope that good will awashes you after you catch this lovely little gem. Or ¡Vete a la mierda!, as Los Frikis might say.