Mi Vida Loca (1994) +

Note doodle executed during screening of film, 10.23.10.
Permanent ink on cotton bond paper, roughly 8.5" x 11".
Click to enlarge.

A startling, direct portrait of life for young women in Chicano Echo Park during the late 1980s and early 1990s. I remember not loving the film as much as I wanted to when I first saw it during its theatrical release. I recall craving the film to address lesbian possibility for the gang women featured. I also remember thrilling to the scenes when the women gathered for the council. In that scene the principals and recurring/supporting characters appear alongside women who are clearly non-actors and the scene carries a curious authenticity as a result. A few thoughts on the film. FIRST: It's a brilliant screenplay, I think. The diction and syntax are really quite extraordinary. The actors have screen presence but they aren't always the most dynamic performers, which doesn't make the screenplay necessarily come to life. But listening to the screenplay this time through I was very impressed. NEXT: I didn't remember Jacob Vargas from this, nor did I notice Salma Hayek, though she does pop from the screen here. NEXT: The film walks a really fine line between placing the women at center while also marking the ways that relationships with men configure their sense of self and sense of possibility. I really admire the feminist filmmaking I see here. The way Anders maintains the centrality of female experience even in contexts where the guy stuff is much more spectacular. The way the men are filmed, too, suggest a really compelling feminist filmmaking sensibility at work. It's quite extraordinary, I think. And one more thing on this -- I like how men are dogs, good guys, and doofuses but no one is necessarily demonize, not even Ernesto. NEXT: I love the way this film caused me to think about the funeral as a device in films featuring female ensembles. How the funeral is a narrative device particularly suited to feminist/female-centric projects...not exclusively of course...but a remarkably efficient scenario within which female-centric relationship networks and community can be mapped. Makes me want to build a list of funeral women. But I'm not good at lists. FINALLY: I'm still perplexed by my earlier ambivalence about this film. It's an encounter with my more selfish filmgoer self, where I think I wanted the film to give me particular pleasures and I was predisposed to resenting it if it didn't go far enough in the ways I wanted to. Seeing this film tonight, though, i was impressed by just how extraordinary a film it is. Have we seen such a film since? In which women's community is the focus, rather than a dyadic love story? I'm now a fan of the film, in ways I don't think I expected. I see the seams in the film, but I don't care because for some reason now I can see what the film is actually trying to accomplish (where before I think I wanted to be delighted by the chola camp of it all). A worthwhile film of distinguished accomplishment; one of the rare early 90s indies that comes off even better now than it did then.