Raising Victor Vargas

[oscar jubis]

Peter Sollett is a 26 year old New Yorker who directed a Cannes and Sundance award-winning short called Five Feet High and Raising(2000). It has been expanded into this feature film, currently on wide release. It concerns the sexual awakening of siblings Victor, Nino and Vicky, and the efforts of their Dominican-born granny to raise them congruent to her archaic values and mores. Raising Victor Vargas focuses also on the tentative relationship between 16 y.o. Victor and Judy, a girl who mistrusts men. Victor Rasuk and Judy Marte(as well as a few others) repeat the roles they played in the short. They embody these sympathetic characters effortlessly. The frequent use of close-ups makes the film dependent on its unaffected performances. Sollett makes excellent use of Lower East Side locations, providing local color while remaining focused on its characters' rites of passage and the uneasy accommodations required for "la familia" to stay together.

[Frank56]

...and in particular, I love the casting and performance of the grandmother here. Her scene when she takes Victor to the welfare office to give him away, and that turnaround is one of my favorite scenes in the film.