"My Family, Mi Familia"
                             A film review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                         WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL
                               May 20, 1995

   We owe a debt of gratitude to producer Francis Ford Coppola and American
Playhouse this week, for they have brought to the screen an amazing film
milestone, "My Family, Mi Familia," the first big mainstream film by and about
Mexican-Americans in all our diversity (not just as gang members and spitfires
as we are so frequently depicted on film). This is a chronicle of one family
over three generations, from its origins in Mexico and parts of the U.S. that
earlier belonged to Mexico, through the immigrant experience and that of first
and second generation Chicano/as in Los Angeles from the 1920s to the present.
This film was written, directed, and acted by filmmakers who are of the
culture they are depicting on screen. My suspicion is that Gregory Nava
co-writer and director of "Mi Familia" has given us a highly autobiographical
work and that the character of Paco Sanchez (Edward James Olmos), the
writer/brother who narrates the film is at least in part a self-portrait.

   My own emotional connection to this story is so deep that I can't begin to
assess how others will perceive this film. I grew up in L.A. in the forties
and fifties, just a few miles south of the East L.A. barrio where this
film takes place. My mother and grandmother escaped the barrio by marrying
Anglos. So with my Anglo surname and light skin I was never perceived as a
Chicana, but I know what my less assimilable cousins went through and how hard
it was for them. Not surprisingly, I cried all the way through this film--from
the early shots of the L.A. skyline looking the way it looked out my bed-
room window as a child when the 12 story City Hall was the tallest building in
in town, to the closing credits. I'd never experienced this broad sweep  of
Chicano life on screen before, presented with such deep knowledge, love, and
respect--though not dishonestly sugar-coated or without critical awareness.

    After a brief introduction from Paco, the narrator, the film takes us back
to the 1920s and Jose Sanchez's year-long walk from Michoacan to Los Angeles.
There he finds a distant relative "El Californio," who, then in his eighties,
is proud of being a native of Los Angeles, of having been born there when it
was still part of Mexico, i.e., before the Mexican War in 1848.

  Jose is a hardworking, personable young man who marries U.S.-born Maria
and they start a family. But when, in the 1930s, Mexicans are scapegoated as
contributing to the Depression,"La Migra" (the INS) sweeps the barrios.
rounding up and deporting anyone who looks "Mexican" regardless of citizenship
Maria, pregnant with her third child, is sent "home" to a place she's never
been and it takes her two years to make her way back to L.A. with little
"Chuchu" (a diminutive for Jesus).

   If I have one criticism of the narrative of the film it is that after that
episode in 1933 it skips to 1958 when Chuchu (played by Esai Morales) has
grown up to be the "baddest Pachuco gang leader in the barrio." This
twenty-five year jump in the story means that it leaves out what surely would
have been one of the defining moments of his childhood and possible motivating
factor behind his macho posturing and his anger as an adult-- namely the
so-called "Zoot Suit" riots of 1942 in which gangs of Anglos, many of them
servicemen in uniform, attacked and beat "Mexicans" in Los Angeles for several
days, basically unfettered by the law enforcement authorities. I need to to
look at Nava's book to check out my suspicion that such a sequence was deleted
to make sure the film fit neatly into multiplex schedules and t.v. time slots.
It is a jarring jump and makes the film lose an opportunity to show the degree
of racism and bigotry Mexican-Americans had to deal with in the '40s and '50s.

    While the ads for this film feature three male faces, I'm happy to report
that the female characters are as diverse and fully realized in the film as
are the men. Maria's the most traditional of the women but without her faith
in the Virgin she probably would not have been able to make the heroic journey
home with her baby after her deportation. Irene, the eldest daughter is also a
traditional Mexican-American woman but one who deftly combines her family life
with a successful restaurant business. Daughter Tina, who makes the transition
from nun to political activist, is the motivating force in the final episode
of the film when she cajoles brother Jimmy (Jimmy Smits) into marrying a
Salvadoran woman who's about to be sent home, probably to her death.  This is
a marriage of convenience that Jimmy does not, at first, take seriously, but
the journey of self-exploration and healing that it starts in motion
undoubtedly saves Jimmy's life as well.

   "My Family, Mi Familia" is as beautiful and meaningful a cinematic landmark
for Chicano/as as "Daughters of the Dust" is for African Americans. Put it on
your "must see" list.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and
Film.

   Copyright 1995 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not
reprint or reproduce this review without permission.