Growing up is hard to do
Growing up is tough business, as anyone who has made it through
the wasteland of adolescence knows.
Growing up is hard to do
Growing up is tough business, as anyone who has made it through the wasteland of adolescence knows. While my own teen years are nearly a decade removed, I get a glimmer of the old horrors from time to time when my younger cousins talk about their latest dramas – who will they possibly take to the graduation dance and how can they bum a few dollars for lunch money from mom or dad.
When it comes to movies, the trials and tribulations of adolescence are never quite so simple.
Quinceanera
This is especially true of “Quinceanera,” the 2006 grand jury prize winner for drama at the Sundance Film Festival.
The film had an unlikely start. Two gay white men moved into Echo Park, a little pocket in Los Angeles near Los Feliz and Silver Lake. They were fascinated by the extravagant tradition around the quinceañeras held by the largely Mexican population in the community. But soon, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, who directed and wrote the film, noticed that as the community became more gentrified (read: more rich, white people moved in), more and more of their Mexican neighbors were being pushed out. The film explores the process in which the community members are forced out as well as the culture behind the quinceañera.
Magdalena (Emily Rios) is not yet 15 when her parents start planning her rite of passage. Her religious father wants the event to be much more traditional than the lavish party thrown for Magdalena’s older cousin, which included a ride to the reception in a Hummer limo and a DJ spinning Latin salsa as teens gyrated on the dance floor. To save money, her aunt offers to alter the cousin’s dress to fit Magdalena.
Soon Magdalena has bigger worries than her birthday as the dress fits snugger at each fitting. Magdalena swears she has never been with a boy, but a positive pregnancy test seems to refute her claims. Her father kicks her out of the house – not so much for getting pregnant, but because she refuses to admit her wrong-doing. The pregnant girl is exiled to the home of her uncle, Tio Tomas (Chalo González), who has already taken in another wayward teen relative.
When Magdalena’s cousin, Carlos (Jesse Garcia), first appears on screen he acts and looks like the typical gang member. But it soon becomes clear that he was kicked out of his house not for criminal activity, but for being gay. He becomes the only person who believes Magdalena’s claim that she never had sex with a boy despite her growing belly.
The trio live in the house that Tomas has lived in for most of his life. It is the back house to a bigger, craftsman style home on the property, and their already teetering lives are further interrupted when a hipster, gay couple purchases the homes.
Westmoreland and Glatzer, the two Hollywood outsiders who wrote and directed the film, did a good job of navigating it. At times, the film seems amateur, but it works, especially when Magdalena is talking with her girlfriends or her cousin. They seem like real teens and not actors.
In the end the film is about acceptance – accepting who they are, what they have done and the changing world around them. Against all odds, things often do work out in the end.
Wah-Wah
While Magdalena faced a challenge in “Quinceañera,” her life seems almost peachy compared to that of young Ralph Compton (played by Nicholas Hoult).
We first meet Ralph when he is 12 years old and sleeping lightly in the back seat of a car. The driver pulls over and Ralph’s mother, Lauren (Miranda Richardson) has sex with the man, during which Ralph wakes up. In the next scene, we learn the driver was not Ralph’s father Harry (Gabriel Byrne).
Shortly after, his mother runs off and Ralph is left to tend to his father who quickly dives into alcoholism. When he is drunk, Harry is not just sad but angry and he takes it out on his son. Ralph’s only way to deal with the pain is to use his puppet collection, but he soon begs to be sent away to boarding school as his father’s behavior escalates.
Two years later, Ralph returns for the summer a taller and handsomer boy. It seems not much has changed about Harry – except he recently married an American named Ruby (Emily Watson) he knew for just six weeks. While he at first shuns Ruby and hopes his parents will reconcile, Ralph finds a comrade in Ruby who helps him navigate his father’s anger and alcoholism. Gabriel Byrne, who is an outstanding actor, plays a terrifying drunk and Emily Watson shines as the mediator between father and son.
There is no happy ending in “Wah-Wah” as there was in “Quinceanera,” but there is a reconciliation. And films like this serve as a nice reminder, that for most of us, maybe growing up isn’t so hard after all.
Both films are available now on DVD.
