(:)(:)(:)(:) out of a possible five snouts up for Quinceanera on DVD. This bittersweet film captured my heart by depicting a small but completely unexplored subject for mainstream America, the latin American rite of passage for girls on their 15th birthday.
By weaving together the difficulities in a 14 year old girl’s life with the realities of gentrification in Echo Parque, Los Angeles, this movie gives us a peak into a tender, bittersweet, but credible situation. The casting was sublime, especially the role of Tio Tomas–our heroine Magdalena’s great great uncle with whom she comes to live as her Quinceanera celebration approaches–he absolutely is the old guy who for years has sold everyone in the neighborhood some delicious concoction from thermoses in a shopping cart.
See this movie: it’s sweet, it’s got drama, sex, ambiguity, and humerously unusual culture clashes.
Some cynics will lament the happy ending, or question whether the ending can really be so happy when it embraces a Hummer Limo? I say si, si, a mi me gusto La Quinceanera!