It was a strange blip that it wasn't until Sunday that I finally saw "Quinceanera," the movie that won the top two prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. I've been writing about its box office performance for months and even interviewed its star Jesse Garcia and co-directors/co-writers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmorland last weekend. But, I had not made the time to see this movie and boy, was I missing out. On Sunday, I walked from my house to the new Recency Theater (former Laemmle) on Fairfax at Beverly which just re-opened for business. All tickets were $3, hot dogs $1 and popcorn free. Of course the medium coke I bought cost $4 but I still felt like I was getting away with something.
OK, the movie: set in Echo Park, it tells the story of 14 year old Magdelena (Emily Rios) who, despite not technically going all the way with her boyfriend, finds herself pregnant (the sperm crawled up her leg or something). Her preacher father goes beserk so she moves in with her saintly great-uncle Carlos who had previously invited another cousin, Carlos (Jesse Garcia), to move in after his family disowned him for being gay.

Although I have strayed far from my hispanic roots in my adult years, the movie made me remember fondly all the family gatherings at each of my grandmothers' houses, cousins all around, the conversations in Spanish, the food on the stove. It took me back so vividly and that's why I know the filmmakers really got things right. I have aunts who seemed like the aunts in the movie and cousins too. I attended a few of their quinceaneras and loved being taken back to that era of my own personal history by this wonderful movie.

The performances are across-the-board terrific with the standouts being the three main characters: Rios, Garcia and Chab Gonzalez as uncle Thomas. Rios is so natural on screen and does a wonderful job of showing her characters strong sense of self which she never loses despite her circumstances. Garcia's character, however, is not as fully developed and you wonder why he has no issues with being gay (a rare thing for a hispanic kid I would think) and he goes from being unfriendly to his pregnant cousin to wanting to get a job and help her raise her kid. I love that they ended up close and supportive of each other but there is no scene that tells us how it happened.

And then there is the gay couple who moves in to the house in front as part of the gentrification of this Echo Park neighborhood. They seduce Carlos but when one of them begins an affair with him behind his partner's back, all hell breaks loose and the couple evicts the uncle and the two cousins from the back house which is a part of their property.
There's an upbeat ending, believe it or not, and what I did like was that Garcia's character really does grow into a man who has some lessons to teach those relatives who had been so judgemental.