IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES
Directed by Patricia Cardozo
Rated PG-13, 90 minutes
In English and Spanish with subtitles
"Real Women Have Curves" has been winning audience awards and shouted accolades ("You go, girl!") in festivals from Sundance to Toronto and points south. It tells the story of the prickly relationship between a zaftig East L.A. Latina teenager named Ana (newcomer America Ferrera) and her overbearing Mexican immigrant mother Carmen (veteran Lupe Ontiveros). Well, this relationship is more than prickly, it's downright contentious. There are two major bones of this contention. Carmen constantly and publicly reminds her daughter how fat she is, calling her "Gordita" (translated as "Butterball"), although Ana is in fact an attractive young woman who represents the leaner end of the scale of the women in this picture. And Ana, a bright kid with the offer of a full scholarship to Columbia University, wants to make something of herself, while her mother is determined not to let her rise above her station.
There are scenes of great fun in this movie, but overall it is not a lighthearted romp. Carmen's vendetta against her daughter's self-image and ambitions takes care of that. "It's because I love you I make your life so miserable," she says, and that becomes the story's ruling irony. Ana as a result is a sullen teenager who for much of the movie seems to be gradually sinking under the weight of her family's narrow expectations, although the discerning moviegoer will anticipate an eventual turning of the tide.
Affection for the main characters is a key to the enjoyment of many movies. Here Lupe Ontiveros ("Chuck and Buck") puts her considerable skills at the service of showing the humanity of this down-putting, repressive mother who has worked to support her family since she was thirteen and sees no reason for her daughter to aspire to anything more. Her attitude may well spring from a loving impulse - not wanting to see Ana fly too high and get burned - but it still goes against our grain. And her needling about Ana's weight has nothing to do with health; she just wants her to slim down to get a husband, and then all bets are off. Ontiveros is a skilled and sympathetic actress, but how much you warm up to her may depend on how strongly you feel about the issues at stake. Ferrera too does a remarkably assured job of showing us the powerfully conflicting emotions that drive Ana, but the kid has a tough row to hoe, and she's often pretty grumpy about it.
The source 1990 play by Josefina Lopez focused on Ana's older sister Estella (Ingrid Oliu), who runs the dressmaking shop where the movie's uproarious signature scene - real women showing their curves - takes place. Patricia Cardozo's screen version (her feature film debut, produced by HBO) shifts the center of the story to the teenage Ana, raising the youth profile and opening up the horizon for a protagonist whose whole life stretches out before her with infinite possibilities if only she can climb out of the cellar her mother is digging for her.
Love is blind, and a movie that makes you fall in love with it, as this has done for so many viewers, renders a lot of quibbles irrelevant. If that special chemistry doesn't seize you, there are a lot of warts to contend with in "Real Women Have Curves". The principal acting is wonderful, but some of the rest shows amateur strains. The male characters are not people, but symbols - the father and grandfather are there to be kind and non-judgmental, in counterpoint to the mother; there's a high school teacher who serves to prod Ana toward realizing her potential; and there are two boy cousins who seem to show up only to pick up their checks. More developed is Ana's rich Anglo sweetheart, but he ultimately is there only to serve the purpose of her passage to womanhood, after which she summarily cuts him loose, a moment that would be controversial were the gender roles reversed. There are nuggets of meaningful if heavy-handed observation - the dresses Estella produces are for skinny girls, not the real women who make them - but not much is done with this, nor with the economic conditions that earn Estella's shop $18 for dresses that will set Bloomingdale's customers back a cool $600.
There's plenty of humor, warmth, heart-tugging emotion, strong themes of feminism and independence, a few surprises, and a good-hearted dose of positive self-imaging for young women who don't fit the standard Hollywood/Madison Avenue ideal. "Real Women Have Curves" does not have the rollicking, irresistible comic sense of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", a film to which it has been widely compared but which it resembles only superficially. It's more serious, more earnest, and a bit clumsier, and these features will make it even more endearing to many. If it doesn't make you fall in love in the first reel, though, you may have a hard time overlooking its shortcomings.
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