Submitted by Jeff Hensley, Nov 17, 2007 17:56

I liked the movie and its sense of a story being told rather than a movie being watched. I find the reviewer's comments about Verastagui's film family both understandable and curious. A friend of mine commented yesterday that she and another friend had gasped in the surprise of recognition, saying "that's my family" on the screen. My friend is a rather joyous, expressive Hispanic. The family and the extreme loyalty he portrays seem to be part of a cultural whole that is unfamiliar to many of us. We are surprised and a little taken aback to find families with such warmth and such loyalty and such joy. But my close Hispanic friends (and a few of my less expressive Anglo friends) do have such families. The social isolation Nina experiences and the lack of support she has available mirror the situations of many young women who face unintended pregnancies and fall back on the culturally supported option of abortion. It doesn't take a monster or a socially maladaptive personality in our culture to decide abortion is the only thinkable option, only a person who has accepted the lies we breathe in, simply by living in our times. Believablility of the choices in process of being made by Nina wasn't much of a problem for me with the film. There was one small window of preachiness mid-film when the basic issue of abortion was discussed. A bit of re-shooting and editing in less standard dialogue could fix that problem easily. It would be worth the effort, now that the film is demonstrating that it has legs. The surprise ending makes the film worthy of anyone's attention.

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