Gael García Bernal in Motorcycle diaries

Bearing in mind the different challenges to the task of deconstructing Gael Garcia Bernal’s performance as Ernesto Che Guevara in Motorcycle Diaries (Salles 2004) into a set of “culturally and historically specific codes” (Dyer 135), rather than reading them as a reflection of his “personality” (Naremore 3), this chapter explores how his acting and personal discursive strategies come together in the film with the twin aspects of his stardom (Latin sensuality and politics), elements of Salles’s realist filmmaking style, and the film’s mise-en-scène to create Guevara as a “ravishing revolutionary.”