Jonathan Rosado’s “Matador Bolero” is a cult movie — literally. Paying tribute to ‘70s exploitation films, it resurrects that decade’s fears of acid-fried young women committing violence. (Actor Kansas Bowling played Manson Family member Sandra Good in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,” a role she’ll reprise in a film set for 2028 release.) Set around New York’s club scene, its UFO lands near several generations worth of countercultural filmmaking: the “superstars” of Andy Warhol’s Factory, the No Wave scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and forays into indie sci-fi like Slava Tsukerman’s “Liquid Sky” and John Sayles’ “The Brother From Another Planet.” Rosado’s approach barely sticks to a narrative, although one exists.
Dressed in white dress and sporting a daisy around her neck, a woman tosses plastic eggs into a river. The objects will re-emerge later on, after we’ve been introduced to a cult worshipping Bolero, a supercomputer whose face is represented by a purple orb. Meanwhile, the Matador nightclub descends into chaos when someone murders movie star Beverly Green (Deidra Prata). (Rosado plays Charlie Bastillo, the Matador’s owner.) After the shooting, a group of topless women, who belong to the cult, take to the club’s stage. Two cops investigate the case, while a TV presenter (Jack Irv) offers news bulletins. Atom (queer, non-binary musician Yves Tumor), a mysterious alien, places phone calls that appear to help motivate the action.
Like all three Rosado films, “Matador Bolero” is shot on Super-8. It’s edited in an associative style. Rosado started out as a musician, composing and performing his own scores as the Suede Hello. (Nicolette Wilkey is the band’s other member.)
The music’s as important as the visuals. It’s mixed much louder than the rather faint dialogue. It switches around in tone, including psychedelic rock, dance music and John Carpenter/Tangerine Dream-style electronics. The emotional coherence of the film’s editing comes from the moods suggested by the score.
The theme of doppelgangers, produced by the cult’s rituals, comes out in Rosado’s cinematography. (Amusingly, this explains Jackson playing two roles.) His camera has double vision. “Matador Bolero” uses simple techniques to build a world of tremendous possibility. Superimpositions construct a woman’s third eye. Here, mirrors are portals that open up space to another dimension. Two versions of a character blend together as she touches one. Brightly colored kaleidoscopes flicker away.
“Matador Bolero” caught my eye at first because it marks the acting debut of Tumor. When Rosado’s synopsis cites “an elusive being living outside the realms of time and space” as its characters, I could guess whom they would be playing. The neo-glam singer’s videos are quite cinematic: “Kerosene” restages parts of David Cronenberg’s “Crash.” Rosado treats Tumor as though they were Edie Segwick in 1965. Spouting off mystical gibberish in voice-over, they drift restlessly around an apartment, wearing a black wig, silver lame jacket, stockings, a crucifix necklace, and studded leather boots. The camera watches, fascinated by their presence alone.
Many micro-budget films have served up pastiches of the same period’s genre movies, especially Italy’s giallos. The returns are diminishing. “Matador Bolero” pulls off something far odder. Its more narrative-oriented sections are rather flimsy, but they’re meant to be. Rosado doesn’t try to create a realistic sets or get naturalistic performances from his cast. “Matador Bolero” transcends parody by finding the dreams within its pulpy source material. It might be a gigantic goof, but it’s also a real vision.
The success of these elements of “Matador Bolero” makes one wonder what it would look like if the film jettisoned storytelling even further. Rosado’s previous two films, “Viridian Hue” and “Brutalist Couture,” took a similar tack to period genre movies. Despite its resemblance to New York underground films, “Matador Bolero” lands nearer an impoverished cousin of Canadian horror director Panos Cosmatos. Not everything in it works fully, but so much does that Rosado seems to have a bright future.
“Matador Bolero” | Directed by Jonathan Rosado | Lucky American Films | Plays May 22 at the Roxy
