Our take
With an acrobat in a sanitarium, elephant trunks spouting blood, and a religious cult whose patron saint is a rape victim, Santa Sangre isn’t going to be an easy watch, especially with the avant-garde direction of the iconic Alejandro Jodorowsky. It’s tough to watch the explicit scenes, both of Fenix’s childhood circus reality and his adult hallucinations, with the hallucinations visually recalling his childhood trauma. But through these terrifying, freaky images, Jodorowsky takes his own memories and crafts it into a twisted, but deeply personal psychosexual nightmare, confronting the exploitative nature of faith and family through various circus acts. Santa Sangre is one of its kind.
What it won
Cannes
1 nom
The story
A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless, cult leader mother, and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.
After escaping from the sanitarium, former circus artist Fenix reunites with his armless mother, becoming her arms to enact murder and revenge.
When a film is practically named Holy Blood, it’s no surprise that it will be bloody. Santa Sangre has a lot of gory, violent, downright disturbing scenes that’s just part and parcel of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s style. View at your own risk.
Kinda weird to cast your own children into this kind of film, though for young Fenix, I can’t say it would be easy to cast any child at all.
The details
Streaming arrival
Who picked it
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
