Girls in the 'Hood

Mi Vida Loca has all the conventions one expects of the gang-movie genre. There’s poor Latino kids stuck in an urban purgatory with no way to get out. Rival gangs fight each other instead of the system that keeps them down. Drug deals go bad and people die. There’s the required drive-by shooting scene and some pontificating by older gangsters who’ve gone legitimate. In this way, Mi Vida Loca resembles Menace II Society, Boyz N the Hood, and even Colors.

But there is a difference. Allison Anders, who also directed Gas Food Lodging (1992), manages to make a girl-gang movie that’s more about relationships than gun battles.

The story hinges on the friendship between two Latina gang members, Sad Girl (Angel Aviles) and Mousie (Seidy Lopez). Growing up in troubled LA neighborhood Echo Park, they join a girl’s gang in their early teens. Parents, or anyone over 30, are non-existent in this world. Gang membership offers sisterhood and love to girls without much family.

Trouble comes when Sad Girl and Mousie fall for the same guy, Ernesto (Jacob Vargas), and each have a child by him. Their jealousy almost ends in a fight to the finish, but it’s interrupted providentially by Ernesto’s violent death. Tragedy reunites the friends and they return to gang life. A female friend, Whisper (Nelida Lopez), takes over Ernesto’s drug business and his fatherly responsibilities. Whisper gives drug money to the single mothers when food stamps and welfare fall short.

The film’s voices of wisdom are two older gangsters who’ve made it to their late 20s. Giggles (Marlo Marron), an ex-convict, tells the younger women not to depend on men, that women must only depend on each other. Giggles knows firsthand that "by the time they’re 21, all our men are either crippled, in jail, or dead." But Giggles falls for the one living ex-gangster her age, Big Sleepy (Julian Reyes). Big Sleepy paints murals on cars and is a single father. He urges Giggles to move in with him and start a family. Since she went to prison to protect her last lover, she can’t commit to him. This is understandable in a world where many women are both mothers and widows by age 18.

It’s rare to see an American movie with an all-Latino cast, especially one showcasing women. Anders did a good job casting movie and TV professionals alongside talented amateurs from Echo Park itself. Nelida Lopez, an Echo Park resident and first-time actor portraying herself, offered a particularly fine performance.

ON THE WAY TO viewing Mi Vida Loca, I began to worry that as a generic whiteboy watching it in the Seattle Film Festival I just wouldn’t "get it." I assumed that 50 percent of the dialogue would be in Spanish and the cultural symbolism would go unrecognized. I thought I’d read subtitles all evening.

But the dialogue is in the street slang you’d hear in any American city. The characters use the occasional Spanish word, but the context makes the meaning obvious. Fortunately, the director focuses on the specifics of love, loyalty, and friendship.

In one scene, the homegirls flash gang hand signals in front of Giggles, trying to get her to flash the signs back, but she won’t. You don’t have to know the signals to know that her response means she’s pulling away from her friends.

This film shows that there’s more to poor kids from the barrios than the sensational way in which they’re portrayed on television. Sad Girl, Mousie, and their homegirls are people like us. They want to be loved. They want some dignity and a little money in their pockets. They want a better life for their children and to live in a community where they’re safe.

As a single mother living in LA, director Allison Anders obviously empathizes with these women on the margins. By showing specifics of life in an LA barrio, she avoids cheap sentiment and says some universal things about humanity.

Mi Vida Loca. Directed by Allison Anders. Released by Son6y Pictures Classics. 1994.