I’ve been in lust with notorious superstar Gloria Trevi since I first caught her film debut, Pelo Suelto, on a Spanish-language channel sometime in the mid-’90s. With her brazen sexuality and the willingness to exploit it, what better romantic icon for a lost boy with burgeoning erections and a love of catchy tunes?
What I didn’t know, however, is the hell she was being put through by her manager, Sergio Andrade. A music producer and sexual predator who ran his services like a religious cult, he constantly brought in scantily clad scads of young women to fill his hit-making coffers, as well as his eternal erotic pleasure.
The whole downbeat drama is documented in Gloria, featuring a highly praised performance by Sofía Espinosa as the acclaimed queen of Mexican pop. Starting as a street urchin looking for fame and fortune on the music charts, Trevi quickly comes under the spell of Andrade (Marco Pérez), grooming her into Latin America’s biggest star.
Eventually, it leads to a chaotic life on the run, filled with more perverse twists than a whole season of a telenovela, including dead babies, underage accusations and, ultimately, Brazilian incarceration. Answering many of the dirty rumors about what happened during this time, director Christian Keller does away with both sides of the story, instead telling Gloria’s version of the facts.
Espinosa miraculously becomes Trevi, with her raspy voice, torn shirts and intense demeanor; it’s horrific though to see this Mexican symbol of personal liberation and sexual freedom was actually a talented slave to the very life she sang both about and against. The film does her story absolute justice.
But, in case you’re wondering, she’s doing much better now, still making hits. —Louis Fowler