Reviews - Trinity University

Mi Familia/My Family
The film is inspired by Nava’s family and based on his research
on other Mexican-American families in East Los Angeles.
Mi Familia was released in May 1995 to mixed reviews. The
journal Cineaste, for example, found the film traditional in form
and style, but insightful and culturally ~alidating.~ Sight and
Sound, however, regarded the film as stereotyped and lacking
in ~ubstance.~ Variety referred to Mi Familia as “colorfully
melodramatic, shamelessly predictable and generous in spirit,”
estimating that it would prove successful with a Latino/a audience
drawn to its “soap-operaish” quality of rnel~drama.~
Variety also pointed to the film’s heavy-handed style, which
“emphasized the more volatile and violent behavior of Chucho
and Jimmy, giving the women rather short shrift.”6 In an interview
with Cineaste, Nava acknowledges that his purpose in
making Mi Familia was not to teach or to provide a history of
the Chicano experience. Rather, he noted, the main purpose
in making the film was to entertain while inspiring “you [to]
feel dignity or pride if you are a chic an^."^ Nava’s latter aim
seems to have been achieved, insofar as Mexican-American
spectators have few representational models to draw on.
A major problem with the film, however, is that none of
the characters is fully developed, except for an attempt to show
Jimmy’s troubled life. As spectators, we learn very little about
Memo and Paco, or how they achieved their success. Particularly,
in regard to Memo, the film hints at internalized racism,
shown through Memo’s Americanization (he is known as
Bill) and his desire to embrace white culture, but never develops
this. The scene in which Memo brings home his white
blond fiance and her parents to meet his family is trivialized
and played to evoke laughter at the white family’s apparent
discomfort when confronted with a foreign culture. Memo’s
embarrassment is reflected by his body language and nervous
countenance, but it is Carlitos’s disruptive behavior (interrupting
the interaction between the two families and culminating
in the child’s naked exhibition in front of the guests) that is
the focus of the scene. Internalized racism impacts the Mexican-American,
Latinalo family, and needs to be addressed.
Instead, Nava chooses to interject Carlitos into the emotionally
charged scene, undercutting an opportunity to voice the
racial concerns that affect the Mexican, Mexican-American
family.
Mi Familia discounts gender politics and instead reinforces
patriarchal values of Chicana, Latina subjectivity by
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