A detailed look at Hispanic life, 'Real Women' warm, authentic
Marta Barber
Miami Herald
Published: Friday, October 25, 2002
Ana is a top student at Beverly Hills High School. Her smarts and dedication daily take her away from her barrio in East Los Angeles to the posh neighborhood of the rich and famous. She takes two buses to get there. Yet the distance is nothing compared to the gap she crosses every day between her Mexican culture and the America beyond. In the former, she's constantly reminded of responsibilities. In the latter, she's allowed to dream.
Making it across these troubled waters is the story ofReal Women Have Curves, a warm, funny, engaging film by Patricia Cardoso that realistically portrays the struggles of many first-generation American women.
Cardoso takes us to a Mexican enclave in U.S. territory filled with colorful walls, signs in Spanish and the lively music from across the border. At the film's core are full-figured Latina actresses taking on roles other than that of maid or nanny to a rich, non-Hispanic family. These are not Hollywood sets; this feels authentic.
Close to graduation, Ana (newcomer America Ferrera) is prompted by her teacher to think of college. At home, though, her mother, Carmen (Lupe Ontiveros), has her future lined up for her: finding work and a husband. Work is scheduled to begin immediately, at the small factory owned by her sister, Estela (Ingrid Oliu), the 30-something spinster who, following tradition, still lives at home. Also living in the tidy home Ana's father Raul, a gardener at a mansion, andabuelo, her father's father.
Finding a husband for Ana will require help of another nature: Carmen, in a detail that will be recognized by many Catholic Latins, hangs a statuette of St. Anthony upside down. (Tradition says an upside-down St. Anthony will bring love to an unmarried daughter.)
Real Women is filled with many such delightful details, weaving a rich portrait of a multigenerational family straddling two worlds. The clash between Carmen and Ana is immediately recognizable to any daughter -- or son -- in a loving family who wants to go away to college. Carmen will do anything -- feign pregnancy and illness, fall into melodrama, keep multiple altars at home -- to make Ana see her ways. Yet Ontiveros plays her with such nuances that you laugh at her antics.
For a while, it seems Ana will have no recourse but to give in to her mother. But there are always glints of rebellion. She stirs things at the factory when she describes it as a ''sweatshop'' and questions her sister's meager charges for the high-class dresses she makes. (There's a wonderful scene in which Ana complains of the heat in the factory and takes her shirt off and all the women follow her.) Ana goes as far as to engage in a hidden relationship with Jimmy, a non-Mexican student. But Mr. Guzman (George Lopez), her teacher at Beverly Hills High, won't give up on Ana and presses her parents on the importance of higher education.
Though the story feels stretched (it was originally made as an HBO movie) and skims only the surface of more serious subjects -- economic abuse of immigrants, the lack of opportunities for the Latino community -- Real Women Have Curves does more than paint a pretty picture. Watching Oliu, Ferrera and Ontiveros will remind many South Floridians of their own families. It's almost like a trip home.
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