Sundance winner bursts with life
Review: Quinceañera

By Charles Judson
Staff Reviewer

Former Atlanta actor Jesse Garcia (left, with Emily Rios) makes a splash in Quinceañera.

The Story (Synopsis written by John Cooper and stolen borrowed from sundance.org):

As Magdelena's (Emily Rios) fifteenth birthday approaches, her life is consumed by thoughts of her boyfriend, her Quinceañera dress, and the Hummer limo she hopes will show up on her special day. Life seems so simple in her Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, until fate delivers an unwelcome surprise–she is pregnant. Immediately expelled from her religious family home, she is taken in by her great-granduncle Thomas (Chalo González) and tough cholo cousin Carlos (Jessie Garcia), who has been rejected by his own father for being gay. Together they form a makeshift family unit that must stand up to social stigmas and encroaching urban gentrification that threatens the only neighborhood they know.

Directing team Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer playfully label Quinceañeraa "neo-sink drama," and indeed it is a reinvention of the "kitchen sink" dramas that peppered British cinema in the '50s and '60s. They were known for adult storylines, class conflict, and sardonic humor, but to consider Quinceañeraso simply is an injustice.

Review: Of the handful of films I was able to see at Sundance this year, Quinceañera definitely registers as one of the best.

For a nation bursting with otherness, with diversity within diversity, it's frustrating to see bland movie after bland movie filled with human ciphers that exist only because the needs of the movies plot dictate it. This is no truer than when it comes to how families and culture are depicted on screen.

Now I've read several reviews that have tagged Quinceañera as being tame and even mediocre. Personally, I think these reviews—in the words of somebody whose name I can't remember—are full of ca-ca crap.

I'm not of the mind that a film should be all things to all people. Nor that a great or entertaining film is only defined by its ability to speak about the human condition, whatever the hell that might be.

I am of the mind that a film should be decently well written, well constructed, unique unto itself (a concept that's difficult to explain, but trust me, I know it when I see it) and should be filled with life. Truth be told, I'll take a film overflowing with life over a soulless yet structurally flawless film any day. And Quinceañera is infinitely more relatable and closer to real life than the majority of indie films I see year in and year out.

Emily Rios's Magdalena is that super smart girl you had a mad crush on back in high school. That one girl that, on the last day of school, has you kicking yourself in the ass because you never manned up and asked her out. That one girl that twenty years later, as you're gawking at the fact that she's now all legs and curves, someone tells you she's become a successful lawyer making more than you can count and you aren't surprised.

While Rios is Quinceañera's core, I'd argue that Jesse Garcia (a former Atlanta resident and recent L.A. transplant), as Carlos, is this movie's beating heart. And thankfully, it's not because the role is designed to tug at our heartstrings using trite pathos and recycled gay psychodrama. It's because Carlos, much like Brokeback's Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, is recognizably human.

Do I want to see more films like Quinceañera? Hell, yes. Most of all I'd love to see more films like it come out of Atlanta. Films about being a redneck Latino from North Georgia. Or growing up Southern Baptist in Valdosta. Stories about campus life at Spelman and UGA.

Films that are, like Quinceañera, bursting with life.

Charles Judson is a local screen & comic book writer and a regular contributor and film critic for CinemATL.

Quinceañera
Rating: (4 out of 4)

Directed by: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland
Written by: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland
Starring: Emily Rios, Jesse Garcia, Chalo González, David W. Ross, Ramiro Iniguez, Araceli Guzman-Rico

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