January 10, 2007
Quinceañera
I was dubious at first. I knew I had rented the DVD based upon a recommendation of Leonard Maltin, but I wasn't sure whether I was in the mood for a coming of age story about a 14-year-old Hispanic girl getting ready to celebrate her Quinceañera (literally "fifteen years", it's something like a Hispanic Bar Mitzvah). So I told myself I'd give it ten minutes or so, but if it didn't grab me by then, I'd just move on to something else.
The opening credits didn't give me much hope--a bunch of extremely formally dressed young people promenading around to the strains of Verdi's Grand March from Aïda. It could only go up from there. And it did.
The film opens with Eileen's Quinceañera, and it rapidly develops that her cousin Magdalena will be celebrating hers in a few months. By re-using Eileen's gown, Magdalena hopes she can save enough money to afford a limo, though her preacher father is dubious. But a problem develops when the gown doesn't fit, and Magdalena's waistline keeps growing, though she swears she's still a virgin. Nevertheless her father shouts at her for bringing disgrace to the family, so she runs away to live with her uncle (Tio Tomas), a non-judgmental 85-year-old with plenty of stories to tell. Also sharing the uncle's small apartment is Magdalena's cousin Carlos, who has the Spanish word for troublemaker tattooed on his abdomen. Yes, he has issues.
The setting is the Echo Park district of Los Angeles which is undergoing a wave of gentrification. There are conflicts aplenty between the older generation and the younger generation, between the longtime residents of the neighborhood and the new arrivals.
It's a great story, and one of the things that I really liked about it was that although it reaches a satisfying conclusion, not all the loose ends are tied up at the end (sort of like real life).
Quinceañera is a keeper. BTW, it won two awards at the 2006 Sundance Festival.
Posted by jt at January 10, 2007 02:24 PM