Quinceanera: 2006, dir. Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Seen at Barton Creek Cinemark (press screening).
Quinceanera was a nice little film, but I expected something more memorable from a movie that was so highly praised at Sundance. I know many people who would expect anything that won an award at Sundance these days to automatically be unexceptional, but I was optimistic. The week before, I had reviewed the formulaic teen dance film Step Up, and it was surprising to find Quinceanera nearly as full of cliches, stereotypes, and predictable plot twists. Fortunately, the characters are so engaging that they help overcome the more mundane aspects of the familiar coming-of-age storyline.
The film focuses on Magdalena (Emily Rios), who is preparing for her quinceanera, the big party surrounding a girl’s 15th birthday, and dealing with a variety of emotions. Sometimes she wishes she didn’t have to be feted, but at the same time she wants the accoutrements her wealthy cousin enjoyed at her party: a new dress instead of a hand-me-down, and a Hummer limo to carry her and her friends to the party. In the middle of all this, Magdalena unexpectedly finds herself pregnant … without having had sex. Her father, a preacher, refuses to believe her and Magdalena moves in with her great-uncle Tio Tomas (Chalo Gonzalez), who has already taken in another family black sheep, Magdalena’s gay cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia). Carlos and Magdalena both try to determine who they are, what they want, and how they should prepare for the future.
Quinceanera is set in Echo Park, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, and one of the movie’s themes is the effect of gentrification of the neighborhood and its longtime residents. Tio Thomas gets new landlords, a white upper-class gay male couple who aren’t happy about the older man’s long lease. When Magdalena goes apartment-hunting, all she can find are beautifully renovated places outside her price range. The neighborhood is a clash of traditional Latino culture and sleek sophisticated yuppies. The film appears to condemn gentrification at times, but at other times dismisses it as inevitable. Are we supposed to equate Echo Park’s growing pains with Carlos and Magdalena’s?
Quinceanera‘s strength is in its characters, which begin as stereotypes but break free. Magdalena starts as a frivolous teen who wants a fancy party, but gradually shows her responsible and caring side. Her boyfriend Herman seems at first like a horny teen punk trying to get into her pants, but he later appears to genuinely care for her, and it turns out he’s an honor student whose mother has high hopes for him. The landlords end up less sympathetic and charming than they appeared at the beginning of the film. People are unexpectedly generous, or petty, or forgiving. In other words, they’re a lot like actual people, which makes them enjoyable to watch. Only Tio Tomas seems more like an saintly archetype than a person, especially near the end of the film, but he’s such a wonderful, likeable man that it hardly seems to matter.
The movie also has some wonderful small moments: Tio Tomas preparing the food he sells on the street, Carlos stealing a CD out of a car to give to a friend, Magdalena and Herman sitting on a bench talking. As a whole, Quinceanera offers no real surprises … except for the surprise of enjoying a couple of hours spent with the main characters.
Quinceanera opens today (Aug. 25) in Austin at Arbor Great Hills, then expands next Friday (Sept. 1) to other local theaters.