‘Victor Vargas’ tackles big issues and does it well

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In theaters

RAISING VICTOR VARGAS, written and directed by Peter Sollett, 88 minutes, rated R. Starts tonight, Movie City 8, Bangor.

The first time we see 16-year-old Victor Vargas (Victor Rasuk) in Peter Sollett’s “Raising Victor Vargas,” he’s tucked in a tenement in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, licking his chops and readying himself for the sexual conquest of Fat Donna (Donna Maldonado), a mountain of good cheer saddled with an unfortunate nickname who knows that by getting this young buck into bed, she’ll score the sexual coup of the century.

Or at least that’s what she hopes.

From Sollett’s own script, “Vargas” follows Victor’s life after this disastrous near-coupling, which falls hilariously apart in the movie’s opening moments when his troublemaking sister, Vicky (Krystal Rodriguez), and his best friend, Harold (Kevin Rivera), catch him in Fat Donna’s apartment just as he’s about to consummate the act.

In this tough, closed community of thugs, families, gang-bangers and kids, all of whom are hovering just this side of poverty, it’s the kind of event that ignites the cheapest sort of entertainment – a firestorm of gossip – when Vicky takes to her cell phone and starts spreading the word as if she’s just won the lottery.

As the title makes clear, “Raising Victor Vargas” isn’t about raising Fat Donna, though that would make for a blistering sequel, should Sollett be up to the task. Instead, it’s about raising Victor to become a good man.

To do so, two women with their own issues step reluctantly to the plate – his combative, Old World grandmother (Altagarcia Guzman), who’s struggling to care for Victor, Vicky and their brother, Nino (Silvestre Rasuk), in the absence of their parents; and Judy (Judy Marte), a young J. Lo in the making who wants no part of this punk, not when he first approaches her at the neighborhood pool, and certainly not when she realizes that there might be more to him than meets the eye.

Fear masked as anger underscores everything here; in lieu of guns, it’s the characters’ best defense. For Judy, the idea that Victor might be a decent person in spite of his ridiculous posturing is so counter to the other men she’s met in her life, she becomes terrified and pushes him away.

For Victor’s fiercely religious grandmother, the fact that Victor is becoming a man is akin to something awful. Instead of seeing him for who he really is – a typical, relatively happy, randy urban teen with a good heart – all she can see are hormones, sex and girls. Convinced he’s becoming a bad influence on his two siblings, she washes her hands of Victor and unfairly throws him out.

So, what’s to become of him? In this excellent film, which 26-year-old Sollett based on his acclaimed, 1999 award-winning short, “Five Feet High and Rising,” the answers are surprising, complex and richly observed. As small as the movie is compared to summer’s legion of overstuffed blockbusters, the issues it tackles are big – first love, betrayal, the importance of family – and the story never takes the easy way out.

What it gets right is the thrill that often accompanies adolescence, the impenetrable emotional walls urban life tends to build around its poor, the electrical jolt of leaping into a life-defining risk.

With strong performances from its novice cast, most of whom actually live in the neighborhood in which the movie was filmed, “Raising Victor Vargas” has such a naturally compelling flow and is so beautifully unhindered by popular cinematic conventions and cliches that it rises to become one of summer’s must-see movies.

Grade: A

On video and DVD

THE HOURS, directed by Stephen Daldry, written by David Hare, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

In “The Hours,” Stephen Daldry’s moving adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Nicole Kidman becomes Virginia Woolf, a woman whose bouts with depression drove her to take her own life in 1941, when she wrote a suicide note to her husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), placed a stone in her coat pocket and used the River Ouse to float away.

The film, which scored Kidman the Academy Award for Best Actress, begins with Woolf’s suicide and then fades to black, shattering any formal structure to take audiences on a journey back and forward through time that will last the rest of the film.

Indeed, just as in Woolf’s 1925 novel, “Mrs. Dalloway,” on which all of this is loosely based, Daldry fragments time, drawing us into stories busily unfolding in 1951 and 2001, while also spiraling back to the days, months and years preceding Woolf’s death.

With Julianne Moore as Laura Brown, a pregnant, suicidal housewife in 1951 Los Angeles who has discovered in Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” the disappointing truth of her own life, and Meryl Streep as Clarissa Vaughn, a successful editor in 2001 who must face who she is through the encroaching death of her friend and former lover, Richard (Ed Harris), “The Hours” is the sort of film that, in the wrong hands, could have become a conceptual nightmare.

But it isn’t. Bound by Philip Glass’ fluid, dreamlike score and Peter Boyle’s superb editing, the three stories are seamlessly interwoven with such care and skill, the film isn’t just noteworthy for its acting and storytelling, but also for its craft.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on Rotten Tomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

THE VIDEO-DVD CORNER

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those capped and in bold print are new to video stores this week.

About Schmidt?A

Adaptation?A

Analyze That?C-

Antwone Fisher?A-

Biker Boyz?D

Catch Me if You Can?A-

Comedian?B+

DARK BLUE?B

Die Another Day?C+

Drumline?B+

8 Mile?C

The Emperor’s Club?C+

Femme Fatale?C+

Frida?B+

A Guy Thing?D

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets?B+

The Hot Chick?C-

The Hours?A

Just Married?C-

Narc?A-

National Security?C-

Old School?D-

The Pianist?A+

PUNCH DRUNK LOVE?B+

Rabbit Proof Fence?A-

Real Women Have Curves?A-

The Recruit?B

Red Dragon?B+

Spirited Away?A

Standing in the Shadows of Motown?B+

Star Trek: Nemesis?B-

Talk to Her?A-

Tears of the Sun?C-

The Transporter?B-

Treasure Island?B-

The 25th Hour?A

White Oleander?B+