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Raising Victor Vargas is a lovely film, and I wish
I could tell you more about it, but in all honesty its 88
minutes passed so quickly that I emerged with very little
in the way of notes or thoughts. Peter Sollett has
constructed an idealized portrait of Lower East Side love
which is enchanting, although almost surely mythical: Not
just because it’s the mean streets of New York, but because
I sincerely doubt there are any teens anywhere this sweet
and good-intentioned. Victor lives under his grandmother’s
reign, a would-be playa with no actual conquests who gets
inducted into swoony-love with “Juicy Judy” Ramirez after
a great deal of awkwardness necessitated by his attempts to
stop being a smooth asshole and do something real (the lessons
of Cameron Crowe, it seems, have still not yet been
learned).
Beautifully shot by Tim Orr (George Washington),
who has a marvelous eye for urban environments, there’s not
really much in the way of heavy drama: a great deal of youthful
charm, some family conflict between the incredibly conservative
grandmother and her young charges (including Victor’s younger
brother and sister), and non-sexual good times. Sollett seeks
to find the perfect balance between a conservative Spanish
Catholic upbringing and Victor’s father, who abandoned the
family long ago (although, as Victor’s younger brother admiringly
puts it, “How many half-brothers and sisters we got? The man’s
a playa,” indicating the teens still have a lot to learn),
and he finds it by omitting sex altogether. The whole film’s
a bit deceptive, honestly, and cleans up the streets of violence
and drugs altogether, but it’s ridiculously sweet and humane,
and that counts for a lot in between the scabrous doses of
Mexican and midwestern fear and loathing.
—Vadim Rizov
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