My Sister's Quinceanera

My Sister's Quinceanera

2013. USA. Directed by Aaron Douglas Johnston. Set in small-town Iowa, My Sister's Quinceanera eloquently, gently explores the burden of family responsibility on a young Mexican American man who yearns to see the wider world, while his sister's titular coming-of-age ritual dominates a long Midwestern summer. A dress must be bought, dances must be practiced, and tentative romances form, but for this working-class, matriarchal family, a seismic shift is occurring just beneath the surface as Silas (an excellent Silas Garcia) makes tentative plans to leave the cornfields and strip malls of his hometown for nothing else in particular while his fatherless family struggles to maintain the rituals of middle class life. Johnson's naturalism, complete with local non-professionals in the lead roles, is pitched just right; the film exudes an emotional complexity and unforced sweetness that finds the sublime in the seemingly mundane. 72 min.