by MATTHEW HAYS

A Quinceañera is a Latino ritual celebration of a girl’s life when she turns 15. In the hands of filmmakers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (The Fluffer), this tradition is turned into a pivotal moment in a winning independent film, fresh from victory on the fest circuit.

Emily Rios plays a Mexican-American daughter in a strict and conservative religious family. Her life seems perfect as she prepares for her Quinceañera. That is, until she finds herself pregnant. Rios is still unclear as to how, precisely, this happened. After all, she never let her boyfriend enter her. How can she possibly be pregnant? The mystery doesn’t much interest her tight-ass father, who immediately tosses her from the house upon learning she is in the family way. Rios seeks refuge with her great great uncle (Chalo Gonzalez, a vet of Peckinpah films), a loner who never married but remains a cherished family member. Gonzalez is already putting up Rios’s cousin, played by the dreamy Jesse Garcia, who has been turfed out by his parents for being queer.

As one might expect, Quinceañera turns into a film about a house of all sorts, in which the characters struggle to overcome various boundaries. But there is so much that is pleasingly unexpected about this film, from the very fact that it chooses to focus on the lives of Mexican-Americans, so overlooked by Hollywood studios and currently so maligned due to the hysteria over illegal immigration south of the border. For that reason alone, Quinceañera feels terrifically fresh.

As film writer Raymond Williams has noted, the second you show something on screen that hasn’t previously been represented, a feeling of realism emerges. That’s the case here—Glatzer and Westmoreland (who co-wrote the script as well as co-directed) treat their characters with the respect and humanity they richly deserve, and do so in the tradition of British kitchen-sink films of the ’50s and ’60s. The payoff is a film that’s a delight to watch.

And they also scored with their cast. Look for newcomers Rios and Garcia in future—these are two great young talents in a movie that shouldn’t be missed.

Quinceañera opens Friday, Sept. 8

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