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See ‘Garcia Girls.’ If You Can Find It...
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So here’s a lovely, little film most of us will never get to see in the theater. ‘How The Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer’ is an obviously low-budget movie that had the luck to cast America Ferrera in the lead before she hit the big time with ‘Ugly Betty.’ That is the only chance this movie has.
‘Garcia Girls’ has been bopping around the festival circuit since 2005, and it’s got some good buzz. But only recently did it find a distributor. It finally opens this Friday. In limited release. That means, most people will never find it. Most people probably won’t even know about it. There’s been almost no publicity.
Writer/director Georgina Garcia Riedel took the story about three generations of sexually frustrated Latinas in an Arizona border town from her own experience. Grandma (Lucy Gallardo) buys a car so that the aging gardener (Jorge Cervera, Jr.) will teach her how to drive it. Divorced Mom (Elizabeth Pena) is torn between the one-armed butcher at work (Rick Najera) and the town’s married player (Steven Bauer). Daughter (Ferrera) ponders losing her virginity to the dangerous new boy in town (Leo Minaya).
There isn’t much surprise here, and the pace is slow. Appropriately so. The stagnation of opportunity in this tiny town is palpable. But the life that Pena, Gallardo, and Ferrera bring to the characters glows. There is such warmth, humor, and sensitivity. If you’re lucky enough to be near one of the theaters showing ‘Garcia Girls,’ don’t pass it up.
