Hey folks, Harry here with Capone's RAISING VICTOR VARGAS review... beware talkbackers... he uses the word... "beanpole" you know what that means! Anyway, heard nothing but good about RAISING VICTOR VARGAS, so it doesn't surprise me he likes it. He's a man of taste and class. It is strange though that the man with Gillespie cheeks, the source behind the wind in the windy city... Capone... well that he didn't choose to go see CHASING PAPI instead... (giggle)
Capone's RAISING VICTOR VARGAS review
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. A couple of years agoI saw a wonderful short film calling FIVE FEET HIGH AND RISING by first-time director Peter Sollett and featuring two young Latino teenagers in a simple story about meeting and falling innocently in love. The faces of the two leads stuck with me, and I was convinced that these were non-actors simply playing themselves (I later found out I was wrong about that). About a month ago when I started seeing posters for Sollett's first feature RAISING VICTOR VARGAS, I thought it was the same film since the poster features the same two actors (Victor Rasuk and Judy Marte). Although the stories of the two films are not linked, VICTOR VARGAS and FIVE FEET HIGH have much in common in terms of issues teenagers place in a world where they are forced to mature much faster than generations before them. Both films are also exceptionally well made masterpieces.
Sixteen-year-old beanpole Victor (Rasuk) fancies himself the neighborhood (that being the lower east side of Manhattan) player, but when a rumor starts spreading that he's the boyfriend of a somewhat unappealing local girl, he scrambles to link himself with one of the block's most beautiful and unobtainable ladies, Judy (Marte). I first realized how great this film was during the scene where Victor first approaches Judy at the local public pool. He constantly licks his lips and sizes her up and down like she's the last gazelle in a jungle full of lions. Judy is all too aware that her looks in this neighborhood attract all the wrong types of men. Some of whom simply get in her face to tell her how bad they want her. In some cases, these young men practically rape her verbally, so it's not surprising that her disgust and distrust of men is immense. The only person she does trust is her best friend Melonie (Melonie Diaz), who may not be as conventionally attractive as Judy, but she does seem more well-adjusted to men's taunts. With Victor needing a girl to stave off rumors of his other relationship and Judy needing to be linked to a man to fend off would-be verbal assailants, the two eventually do hook up (at least in public; Judy has little interest in Victor physically).
But the story of Victor and Judy is only half the tale. Victors lives with his two younger siblings, brother Nino (Rasuk's real brother Silvestre) and sister Vicki (Krystal Rodriguez), and his old-school, over-bearing moral center grandmother (played by first-time actress and absolute scene-stealer Altagracia Guzman). As good as the scenes between Victor and Judy are, the scenes at home are even better. Victor is a good kid, but grandma still thinks he's a terrible influence on the other kids. She catches Nino masturbating in the bathroom and somehow blames Victor. Judy's weird younger brother is pursuing Vicki, and somehow Victor is to blame simply for introducing them. There's a sequence where the grandmother tries to unload Victor at the social services office simply because she feel she can't handle him. When they find out he hasn't done anything criminal, the social worker threatens to call the police on grandma for trying to abandon Victor. The scene is humorous and heartbreaking all at once. For as much as Victor tries to act grown up in front of his friends, he is such a child when he's with his grandmother, and his love and respect for her is genuine and beautifully expressed by Rasuk.
As Victor and Judy spend more time together, Victor soon realizes that she is the first young woman in his life he must take seriously and treat with respect. The seas are rough between the two of them, and we are never to take for granted that they will finish the film as a couple, especially after a scene where Victor invites Judy over for dinner with his family. But we feel fairly certain that no matter what the outcome of their relationship (during and after the film), they will both have matured in the arena of the opposite sex. Victor will learn to respect women; Judy will learn to trust men a little more. As in FIVE FEET HIGH AND RISING, Rasuk and Marte floored me with their naturalistic performances. Despite learning in the Q&A after my screening with the two stars and Sollett, that the young actors are both trained professionals, I still had a hard time believing it. They're that good; all the performers are. Equally astonishing is the camera work by Tim Orr, who also blew my mind with his work in GEORGE WASHINGTON and ALL THE REAL GIRLS. The look of the film is half its greatness. It's part documentary-style; part chamber piece.
I know we have a long way to go, but I can't imagine RAISING VICTOR VARGAS not being one of my favorite film of 2003. I noticed that, at least in Chicago, VICTOR VARGAS is opening the same week as another film with a Latino cast, CHASING PAPI. I can't imagine that the Latino community would rather see themselves portrayed essentially as cartoon characters in that film, versus living, breathing human in VICTOR VARGAS. Maybe I'm wrong...
Capone
If you find CHASING PAPI morally reprehensible, let me know about it!
