Raising Victor Vargas (2003) Review

Despite a cast of unknowns and improvised dialogue, rookie filmmaker Peter Sollett delivers a Hispanic slice of life drama that is entirely devoid of pretense Judy Marte and Victor Rasuk in Raising Victor Vargas (2002) (Courtesy of IMDB)

In the mid 1980s, NYU film school student Spike Lee made a splash with his thesis project, Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, and his subsequent directorial debut, She’s Gotta Have It. Twenty years later, fellow NYU graduate Peter Sollett has caused a similar stir with his critically acclaimed coming of age film Raising Victor Vargas, an extension of his award winning Sundance short Five Feet High And Rising. Although it’s obviously too early to tell whether or not the Brooklyn-born Sollett has the lasting power of his prolific predecessor, there’s no denying that the expert pacing of his first film and its comfort with the sounds of silence bodes well for the future of East Coast filmmaking. Sollett’s unlikely partner in all of this is a 19-year-old newcomer from Harlem, Victor Rasuk, who was tagged for a misspent youth until he discovered the vocation of acting. Since appearing in the short film and its feature length derivation, Rasuk has gone on to graduate from the Professional Performing Arts High School in New York and land a role in the upcoming Jim Carrey project, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. As the title character, Victor Vargas, Rasuk tries to relieve the boredom of his life at home with two siblings and a strict Catholic grandmother (Altagracia Guzman) by recasting himself in the role of a neighborhood player. But the constraints of poverty and his own self-doubt fail to fool anybody other than his younger brother Nino, played by Rasuk’s real-life sibling Silvestre. Still, that doesn’t stop Victor from trying to strike up a conversation at the local swimming pool with neighborhood hottie “Juicy” Judy (Judy Marte). Although she spurns him at first, her own frustration at being hit on by every low-rent street hustling Romeo eventually leads her to allow him to pretend they are an item so she can also use the charade as an excuse to fend off her unwanted suitors. Stollett’s real gift as a director is that he is comfortable letting life’s smallest moments unfold on film. From the awkward and stilted tempo of the boy-girl dialogue to the bittersweet homespun monologues of Grandma, his version of Manhattan’s Lower East Side is notably devoid of any sex, drugs, guns or gangs. And if you can imagine someone who looks like The Golden Girls’ Estelle Getty and sounds like Prizzi’s Honor patriarch William Hickey, then you begin to get an idea of why Altagracia Guzman as Grandma has taken the festival film circuit by storm. Proving that it’s never too late to get into acting, the 70-year-old former seamstress is made to order for the part and could very well go straight from here to a series of TV commercials that will pick up where Clara Heller left off with her famous Wendy’s tag line, “Where’s The Beef?” By sheer coincidence, Raising Victor Vargas is being released in theaters at the same time as Hollywood’s first foray into Latino filmmaking, Chasing Papi. Victor Vargas is being released in theaters at the same time as Hollywood’s first foray into Latino filmmaking, Chasing Papi.  The Vargas Family (Courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes) While it’s still a little early to celebrate proper representation for the country’s largest minority, this development and others such as the healthy ratings for the ABC sitcom The George Lopez Show are signs that something is definitely afoot. Sollett’s film may also stand a better chance because of the recent success of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Real Women Have Curves. Granted, the romance at the center of Raising Victor Vargas is a case of puppy love. But the true-to-life portrayal of a Dominican household and one-of-a-kind matriarch has all the necessary ingredients to connect across generational and ethnic audience lines. All it needs is a little bit of luck and generous helping of word of mouth. Overall, Raising Victor Vargas fails to strike a single false note. In a day and age when head shaking moments of disbelief are about as commonplace at the Cineplex as stale popcorn, this is reason enough for discerning moviegoers to raise a cheer.