THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 20, 1994 TAG: 9412200071
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
NOW THAT we've heard enough gun shots and four-letter words from the boyz 'n the hood, ``Mi Vida Loca'' gives us a refreshing chance to hear from the homegirls. Directed and written by Allison Anders, who scored with ``Gas Food Lodging'' last year, this film is both humorous and tragic in chronicling the one-way street of girls who stand behind the guys in the gangs.
The film, which has a semidocumentary style, is set in East Los Angeles. The dialogue is frank, to the point and spicy.
The title, translated ``My Crazy Life,'' is no understatement. One by one, we meet the girls of the barrio.
Sad Girl and Mousie, childhood friends, have a rift when they both become pregnant by the same local lad, a drug dealer who is killed by a customer.
The homegirls have the right idea when they announce that men can't be depended upon. ``They're either disabled, gone, or dead,'' one of them explains.
The homegirls get up in arms when they learn that the youthful drug dealer left a truck behind. They'd like to sell it and split the money between the two unwed mothers. The guys have other ideas. They'd like to enter it in an auto contest. A rival gang has yet a third idea - to take it for themselves.
Then, there is Whisper, a dyed-blonde spitfire who carries a gun. Before the film is half through, she is walking with a cane, announcing, matter-of-factly, that ``I was shot.'' It is not an unusual statement.
Gunfire in ``Mi Vida Loca'' is casual and often. The movie, made on a shoestring budget, features the deathly-real thud of pistol fire - not the stereophonic sound of an Arnold flick. You get the idea all too clearly that people die - and there's nothing very exciting about it.
There is Giggles, just out of prison, who yearns to get a job with computers and get out of the neighborhood. She means well, but the chances are against her.
Blue Eyes, a college girl, falls in love with a prison pen-pal. When she meets him, she discovers he is a macho womanizer.
Surprisingly, the men characters are not treated as unforgivable jerks, although they are dumb and misled. They, like the homegirls, are victims of the situation - trying to survive.
``Mi Vida Loca'' tells it like it is and minces no words. The cast, made up of unknowns, is uniformly believable - too believable in fact. Poverty and hopelessness are interrupted by casual, laughably frank comments on life.
A visit to ``Mi Vida Loca'' gives you an idea of the life in that section of Los Angeles. You may feel guilty about laughing, but you'll still laugh. Only on the way home, perhaps, will you contemplate the sadness of it all. ILLUSTRATION: Photo SONY PICTURES
Whisper (Nelida Lopez, left) gives Sad Girl (Angel Aviles) some tips
on how to fight in ``Mi Vida Loca'' (My Crazy Life).''
Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Mi Vida Loca
(My Crazy Life)''
Director/writer: Allison Anders
MPAA rating: R (language, sexual situations)
Mal's rating: 2 and one-half stars
Location: Naro Expanded Cinema, Norfolk. (Tonight and Wednesday,
7:15 and 9 p.m.)
by CNB