Xavi Font went to live in Ibiza at the end of the 80s. He wanted to be a clothing designer, but his exotic models with wide shoulder pads and a lot of color inspired by dragons had no outlet. He was accompanied on his Ibizan adventure by his best friend, Lourdes, and his partner, Manolo. The trio didn’t have a penny, but they soon discovered a way to have fun: they settled in a farmhouse in the countryside and set up a kind of commune where they made their designs and organized endless parties.
It didn’t take long for luck to smile on them. The KU nightclub, the best in the world at that time, hired them to set the scene for their endless night. The group, which had grown with the addition of Jaume, Carlos and Luis, Xavi’s little brother, had an ace up their sleeve: they danced to the rhythm of huge fans dressed in the striking designs created by Xavi. They were so successful that even Freddie Mercury paid them homage.
But there was still a lot to live. One night, music producer José Luis Gil stopped by KU and discovered the most bizarre group of the moment. He decided to catapult him to fame. And boy did he achieve it. Locomía was a hit loved by countless fan clubs in Spain and, above all, in Latin America, but drugs, orgies and internal fights ended its power.
Kike Maíllo has now brought the story of the rise and fall of these boys to the cinema in Disco, Ibiza, Locomía, which will hit theaters in May, but which has already passed through the BCN Film Fest. Jaime Lorente plays Xavi Font, the soul of Locomía, who was thrown out of his own project by producer José Luis Gil, played by Alberto Ammann, in a film full of good music and a lot of color that recovers the spirit of the last 80s and early 90s.
“I have spoken with all the former members of Locomía and with Gil to write the script for the film. They are very grateful for the revival and now they are only surviving because it is difficult when you have had such a brilliant success to return to anonymity,” explains Maíllo in an interview. awarded to La Vanguardia during its passage through the BCN Film Fest.
Maíllo admits that “I was never a big fan of the group, but I was a big fan of the time.” “When I read a news story that talked about the intra-history of Locomía, told a lot of anecdotes and suggested the existence of two characters as charismatic as Font and Gil, two egos so pronounced competing for the paternity of the group, I understood that there was a movie there” , Add.
Later, after investigating the singers’ past, the director understood that “the topics that were on the table were very close, since they had to do with the fight for success, the search for stardom at full speed and that lost paradise that It means having found a place where you can show yourself as you really are and then it disappears.
Because Locomía contributed to the acceptance of the gay community at “a time when neither the country nor the music market were prepared to accept certain things.” Locomía triumphed more than 30 years ago, but Maíllo believes that “the themes raised by the film are rabidly contemporary and may interest younger audiences, because its LGTBI discourse is still very current.”
