Raising Victor Vargas
In most movies about teenagers, the hero has a best friend who's full of chattery, in-your-face bravado. He's the comic relief, the fool with hip clothes and stupid hair, and he goes on at such length about his sexual prowess that it's obvious he isn't getting any. ''Raising Victor Vargas'' dares to put this jughead at center stage and, in the process, discovers a rich and achingly comic tenderness beneath the adolescent bluster. Who knew?
Peter Sollett, that's who. The young New York writer-director discovered his two amateur stars, Victor Rasuk and Judy Marte, while casting ''Five Feet High and Rising,'' which went on to win the award for best short film at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. For ''Raising Victor Vargas,'' his first feature, Sollett followed his actors home: The film is deeply rooted in the youthful rhythms and rivalries of New York's Lower East Side. It's hilarious, sometimes painfully so, but it feels as calculated as the weather.
When we first meet Victor Vargas (Rasuk), the stringy Casanova is actually about to score -- with Fat Donna (Donna Maldonado), his upstairs neighbor. ''This is between you and me, right?'' he asks her with touching naivete, but his younger sister, Vicki (Krystal Rodriguez), is more than happy to inform the entire neighborhood. Victor, with the certainty of youth, knows that a man is only as good as his reputation, so he throws himself at ''Juicy Judy'' (Marte), the most beautiful and unavailable girl on the block. She's out of his league, but he figures that the more he's seen around her, the more everyone will forget about Fat Donna.
Why would Judy tolerate this twerp? Because he's harmless, and because his presence keeps the more aggressive neighborhood horndogs at bay. ''Just think of him as bug spray,'' she tells her friend Melonie (Melonie Diaz), which hints at the depths of Judy's cynicism. ''Raising Victor Vargas'' nails the siege mentality that, fueled by hip-hop braggadocio, currently passes for romance among teenagers, but it's also canny enough to suggest that a woman can build the walls too high. When the wary but willing Melonie gets involved with Victor's friend Harold (Kevin Rivera), Judy angrily demands to know how she can trust him. Melonie's calm shrug is the only answer that matters.
Victor and Judy eventually settle into a truculent symbiosis. In much the same way, ''Raising Victor Vargas'' evolves from a rambunctious urban comedy into a charming and very funny tenement family farce. For all of Victor's mouthing off, he's devoted to his grandmother, Mimi (Altagracia Guzman), a wizened Dominican immigrant with no understanding of or patience with her grandchildren's hormonal growing pains.
In addition to Victor, there's Vicki -- who gets wooed by Judy's younger brother with what can only be termed suave dyspepsia -- and middle sibling Nino, played by the star's look-alike younger brother, Silvestre Rasuk. Nino is the quiet, attentive ''good son,'' but his discovery of the pleasures of self-gratification are enough to send Mimi over the edge, culminating in a riotous scene where she drags the three kids down to juvenile court and begs the authorities to take them off her hands.
Victor's parent's are nowhere to be seen, and most of his friends come from broken homes as well. ''Raising Victor Vargas'' uses that harsh reality as subtle, discordant background noise. Sollett and his cast understand that in this context the most shocking thing a boy can do is bring a girl home to meet his grandmother and that mutual respect might turn out to be a more rare and valuable intimacy than sex or even love. That they put this across without blowing their cool makes the achievement all the more remarkable. The film is small in scope and just about flawless in execution.
A final note: Because the teenagers in ''Raising Victor Vargas'' talk the way many real teenagers do and are sexually active the way many real teenagers are, the MPAA ratings board has decided that real teenagers shouldn't be allowed to see it without a moral guardian present. The ''R'' rating is understandable, but absurd. This is a family film in the most complicated and, ultimately, most cheering sense.
Video
