If you’re scared of planes, or find serpents a bit too (ahem) packed a metaphor, then Quinceañera, which boasts tame backyard gardens and shiny pink dresses, should make for an ideal refuge.
In my experience, conversations about gentrification never reach any satisfying conclusion. They usually go something like so: “This neighborhood used to be so different—so much better.” “Still, ugly condos are better than white flight to the suburbs.” Both sides are mostly right and ruefully congenial, and apart from urban-planning esoterica, the discussion rarely ventures any further. Gentrification shows up plainly in before-and-after photographs, but it isn’t a topic that lends itself to direct address.
The sweet, simple Quinceañera is the surprisingly perfect tonic to such conversations: It’s a movie about gentrification, in part, but it’s preoccupied with tides of people, not the construction of buildings. And so a quiet story set in Echo Park, Los Angeles, about a 14-year-old Latina girl who gets pregnant on the brink of her quinceañera, reflects the stories of hundreds of neighborhoods like hers, which push cultures together in unfair and troubling—and occasionally beautiful—ways.
Magdalena (nicely played by the rookie Emily Rios) wants a stretch Hummer limo (talk about a packed metaphor) to deliver her to her 15th birthday celebration, a semiformal quinceañera in the Mexican tradition. She’s competing with her gorgeous cousin, whose dramatic quinceañera opens the film. When Magdalena watches the alternately touching and tacky video documenting her cousin’s party, her resolve is strengthened. But Magdalena’s preacher father puts his foot down: A quinceañera is supposed to be spiritual, not materialist. And a stretch Hummer doesn’t fit his notion of a proper religious ceremony.
After the party—where the Hummerless Magdalena must, as an additional humiliation, wear her cousin’s pearl-pink dress, altered to fit her suspiciously thickening frame—the tug of wills turns vituperative. Magdalena turns out to be pregnant by her dopey yet ambitious boyfriend Herman (JR Cruz), and she refuses to admit any wrongdoing. By a margin so flimsy it’s almost Clintonian, she is indeed a virgin. (This slippery “miracle” could have been omitted without much damage to the plot.) Her father is outraged by her evasions, and so Magdalena flees to her great-uncle’s apartment.
Up until this point, the film is rather ordinary. The mostly nonprofessional actors deliver uneven performances, with a few exceptions. Inspired by a slew of working-class “kitchen sink” dramas of the ’50s and ’60s (the plot closely parallels Tony Richardson’s A Taste of Honey), Quinceañera neglects its antecedents’ keen interest in the visual poetry of grime. It’s a tradeoff—this movie is less romanticized, and more conscientious about the filmmakers’ class privilege—but it looks clumsy at times.
No amount of mediocre cinematography, however, can diminish the (yes, sentimental, but totally worth it) trio at the center of the film. When Magdalena moves into the back unit of a duplex with her Tío Tomas (Chalo González)—the most adorable old man in the history of adorable old men—she finds another cousin, the rough Carlos (Jesse Garcia), hiding out after being caught perusing gay porn on his parents’ computer. Soon they form a fierce friendship, sketched with a supremely light hand. Their situation is the stuff of after-school specials, but the casual way they recognize themselves in each other’s plight is anything but shrill.
Meanwhile, Carlos is befriended (and bedded) by their landlords—a yuppity gay couple who live in the front unit. They clearly see him as an ethnic stud of the week, but at least initially, the film refuses to judge their behavior as predatory or ruthless. They’re just terribly naive, like Carlos and Magdalena—only their naiveté comes with the cruel edge of economic power. The inevitable clash of race and class is as staunchly objective as it is bittersweet. You’ll mist up for sure—and that’s something you won’t get from snakes on a motherfucking plane. 
