The actor has his best role in years and radiates charisma and infectiously upbeat energy in this heartwarmer about a pioneering openly gay Mexican wrestler

In the macho world of Mexican lucha libre wrestling, “exóticos” are male fighters who compete in drag. Mostly they are straight, but this heartfelt and sweet drama based on real events tells the story of Saúl Armendáriz, an openly gay wrestler who shot to fame as an exótico in the early 90s. It gives Gael García Bernal his best role in years: Saúl is funny, infectiously upbeat, sometimes heartbreakingly vulnerable. He radiates the kind of magnetism that made him a world cinema it-boy in the early 00s (notably in another cross-dressing role: Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education).

Bernal’s Saúl begins his wrestling career using a male alter ego, El Topo. As everyone knows, wrestling is rigged, and since Saúl is slightly built he is...