Art Connections #9

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

10:08 PM
Movie Review
My Family, Mi Familia (1995)
May 3, 1995
FILM REVIEW; A Mexican-American
Journey of Generations
By CARYN JAMES
Published: May 3, 1995
Gregory Nava's "My Family: Mi Familia" is a grandly ambitious, warmhearted, wildly uneven
movie about one Mexican-American family in East Los Angeles. At its liveliest, the film seems
crammed with cheerful Latin music, life-threatening immigration problems and a terrific,
dominant performance by Jimmy Smits. At its most conventional, it offers a trite, overblown
narration by Edward James Olmos and an often flagging sense of drama.
In the 1920's, Jose Sanchez walks from Mexico to California, where he meets and marries the
Mexican-born Maria. These early scenes are among the film's strongest, with a lyrical sense of
storytelling and a feel for the dusty landscape of such hard lives. Pregnant with their third child,
Maria is picked up by immigration officials, thrown onto a crowded train and returned to
Mexico, though she is a United States citizen. Determined to return to her family, she almost
drowns crossing a river with her baby, Chucho. Maria's inner life is vividly created, as her faith
in the Virgin coexists with the superstition that an owl crying in daylight is a bad omen.
The story then leaps to the late 1950's, when Jose and Maria's six children scatter in various
directions. One daughter enters a convent, while a son is hunted by the police. Here the film bogs
down with too many set pieces. There is the eldest daughter's wedding. There is a buoyant scene
in which Chuco (now a young man, played by Esai Morales) gives a mambo lesson to his little
brother Jimmy and Jimmy's friends. The radio blasts from Chuco's red car and everyone dances
in the street. There is a dance-hall scene, in which Chuco is drawn into a knife fight.
Mr. Nava, whose first film was the acclaimed low-budget "El Norte" (1983), is so sincere and
single- minded here that he treats every scene in "My Family" with equal importance, flattening
out its drama. And he seems so enamored of the texture of Mexican-American life that he glides
past any sense of character. Suddenly Toni wants to be a nun; who is Toni, anyway?
Throughout, Mr. Olmos narrates in the voice of the eldest son, a would-be writer named Paco.
He decribes what we can see in front of us and explains the characters' feelings when we ought to
discern them for ourselves. Mr. Olmos's melodramatic reading is a match for his character's
mawkish writing. "The corn was tall and green the day that Jimmy came home," he says.
If the narrator was Mr. Nava's single worst choice, casting Mr. Smits was his best. When the
story jumps to the 1980's, little Jimmy has just been released from prison, where he has turned
into Mr. Smits. For a while, "My Family" becomes a comedy of manners. Toni (with a better
defined character and a few surprises) tries to talk Jimmy into marrying a stranger who is about
to be deported to El Salvador. "When did you become so bourgeois?" she yells when he resists.
"Don't you ever call me bushwacked again," he yells back.
With a deft touch that lightens the story, and the charismatic presence this film has needed all
along, Mr. Smits almost singlehandedly makes "My Family" more engaging. And though Jimmy
also faces tragedy, and estrangement from his young son, Mr. Smits brings emotional power to
some predictable scenes. The Mexican actor Eduardo Lopez Rojas is especially fine as Jose in
the 1950's and 1980's, a man who reacts with believable confusion and anger when his son
Chuco says, "I don't want to be like you."
The cinematographer Edward Lachman and the production designer Barry Robison have smartly
brought a different look to each of the film's three sections. The early scenes have a burned-out,
faded-yellow tinge. The 50's, with its parties and dances is shot in bright balloon colors. Los
Angeles in the 1980's looks familiarly realistic, though the family's clothes and house always

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Angeles in the 1980's looks familiarly realistic, though the family's clothes and house always
echo the vibrant look of Mexican folk art.
Like Paco, Mr. Nava is not much of a narrator, but his story is energetic enough to survive its
sometimes pedestrian telling.
"My Family: Mi Familia" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).
It includes a glimpse of nudity and suggested sex, two bloody deaths and some strong language.
MY FAMILY: MI FAMILIA
Directed by Gregory Nava; written by Mr. Nava and Anna Thomas; director of photography,
Edward Lachman; edited by Nancy Richardson; folk music by Pepe Avila; orchestral music
score by Mark McKenzie; production designer, Barry Robison; produced by Ms. Thomas;
released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 120 minutes. This film is rated R. WITH: Jimmy
Smits (Jimmy), Esai Morales (Chucho), Eduardo Lopez Rojas (Jose), Jenny Gago (Maria) and
Edward James Olmos (Paco)

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