USA,
1993, 92 min
Shown in 1994
CREDITS
- dir
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Allison Anders
- prod
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Daniel Hassid, Carl-Jan Colpaert
- scr
-
Allison Anders
- cam
-
Rodrigo Garcia
- editor
-
Kathryn Himoff, Tracy Granger
- cast
-
Angel Aviles, Seidy Lopez, Jacob Vargas, Pancito Gomez
- source
-
Sony Pictures Classics, 550 Madison Ave, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10022. FAX: 212-833-7911.
-
COMMENTS
Allison Anders, Angel Aviles and Seidy Lopez in person.
OTHER
Alison Anders knows how to uncover big themes in small places. Places like the closed world of Chicano gangs in the sun-drenched, graffiti-spattered Los Angeles barrio of Echo Park. Behind the cool attitudes and sunglasses, Echo Park is a home for terminal romantics with poetic names like Shadow, Giggles and Whisper, rebellious teens who believe in True Love, and gladly invest a year’s wages in a paint job for their beloved low-riders. Mousie and Sad Girl, friends who have been inseparable since childhood, fall for the same guy and both have a child by him. Their ensuing bitterness becomes so profound they are ready to kill each other. Life in the barrio teaches them to eventually abandon their romantic idealism, to grow up and to learn that men come and go: they deal drugs, get busted, do time and get killed. But women stick around to raise babies and pass on some of their hard-earned wisdom. In the interwoven web of narrative, the girls grow up to laugh and talk and grieve and suffer; and at least some of them survive. The film has all the warmth and realism of a Diner for Chicanas, but for all its laid-back, anecdotal charm, it pulls no punches. From the rituals of violence, the gang emerges as the only functioning family unit. Wise are the veterans who can see beyond their day-to-day conflicts and make a place for themselves—a place with love, self-respect and an improvised sense of familia.
—Miguel Pendás
FACTOID #68
Stanley Mosk, who later became a California state Supreme Court Justice, served as the general chairman at the 1967 Festival.
