FILM REVIEW: QUINCEANERA

By Jessica Reaves

Chicago Tribune Staff Writer

3 stars

Pity poor Magdalena, preparing for her quinceanera in Los Angeles's Echo Park. A quinceanera, for the uninitiated, is the coming-of-age party eagerly anticipated by Mexican girls. Ostensibly a celebration of a girl's 15th year and her entrance into society, it's less a birthday party and often more of a prom (with religious undertones), complete with attendants, limousines and a frothy white dress.

The quinceanera industry is alive and well and thriving in cities such as Los Angeles, where the Mexican-American community upholds the tradition in grand fashion and where writer-directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have set their captivating and heartbreaking portrait of two Mexican-American kids, evoking not only the best aspects of the adolescent-angst genre but also mining new ground.

Nearly 15 and part of a tight-knit extended clan, Magdalena (Emily Rios) is, by all accounts, an extremely good daughter. She does well in school, she sings in her father's church and she never actually has sex with her goody-two-shoes boyfriend, Herman (J.R. Cruz). So it's quite a surprise to everyone, most of all Magdalena, when she discovers she's pregnant. Her father, a deeply religious man, is furious and throws her out of the house. Herman, for his part, is very proud, once he gets over his initial shock over his part in this immaculate conception. "We can call him Jesus," he says, patting Magdalena's stomach.

Despondent, Magdalena winds up living with her great-uncle Tomas (the utterly charming Chalo Gonzalez) and her cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia), who has been cast out by his own family for being gay. The three quickly form their own little family unit, standing up for one another against intruding forces, which range from Magdalena's disapproving parents to the encroaching gentrification that threatens Tomas's beloved rough-and-tumble home.

Magdalena, grappling with her semimiraculous conception and its fallout, including Herman's disappearance, is the primary focus of "Quinceanera," and Rios does an admirable job of portraying her inner struggle between childish hurt and adult pride. But as Carlos, Garcia is the real star of the film, representing a kind of "post-gay" character who will feel familiar to a current generation of teenagers. Carlos's primary source of psychic angst is not his sexuality, which, beyond his own conservative family, doesn't seem to be much of an issue, but rather his role as the exotic but untouchable "other" in the intruding world of white, gay, affluent society. Garcia (who has appeared on TV's "The Shield") is fantastic in this role - at once aggressive and vulnerable, angry and devastated.

"Quinceanera" took both the dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and it's easy to see why. There's an undeniably crowd-pleasing element to the narrative arc: Loose ends are tied up neatly by the movie's end, and redemption is never out of reach. That's not to say there's anything pat about the movie, rather that the filmmakers have wisely chosen to feed new and potentially challenging material and characters to mainstream audiences through a venerable, instantly recognizable story structure.

"Quinceanera"

Directed and written by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland; photographed by Eric Steelberg; production designed by Denise Hudson and Jonah Markowitz; music by Micko Westmoreland and Victor Bock; produced by Anne Clements; A Sony Pictures Classics release; opens Friday, Aug. 11. Running time: 1:30. MPAA rating R (language, some sexual content and drug use).

Magdalena - Emily Rios

Tomas - Chalo Gonzalez

Carlos - Jesse Garcia

Herman - J.R. Cruz