Search - Spanglish on DVD

"I am my mother's child!"

M. J Leonard | Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States | 04/06/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Spanglish has some intensely quirky performances, and while at times it's a little over-romanticized, the film does raise a lot of hot-button issues about the Los Angeles cultural divide, where the barrio-driven east meets the glitz and upper middle class glamour of the Westside.



A lack of communication seems to be de rigor in this world, where drunken matriarchs are ignored, where husbands and wives don't talk, and where the Latina hired help struggle to overcome the language barrier and be understood. Spanglish portrays an American family on the verge of crisis; they move through their days in a state of perpetual but agreeable sadness, with each loving the other, but so self absorbed and dysfunctional that they're miles apart emotionally.



John and Deborah Clasky (a wonderful Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni) are married and living in a gorgeous home in Beverly Hills. John owns a five star restaurant, but he's recently been able to cut back his hours to spend more time with his family - he's a nice, affable, and genial fellow who deeply loves his slightly overweight daughter Bernice (Sarah Steele).



John is the emotional opposite to the highly-strung Deborah, who spends her days shopping, streaking her hair, and fanatically jogging to keep her svelte figure intact. Deborah is spoilt and self-absorbed; she treats sex as an aggressive sport and her comfortable life is a daily challenge.



When young Mexican single mother Flor (Paz Vega) takes her daughter, Cristina (Shelbie Bruce) to Los Angeles in search of better opportunities, she gets a job as housekeeper at the Clasky family home. The family immediately welcome her into their midst, with Deborah quick to gush "your gorgeous!" while her wine swilling Mum, a former jazz singer (a riotous Cloris Leachman) observes in knowing silence.



Flor is shocked at the level of family competitiveness: at first she's content just to observe the family's antics, but soon she begins to get involved. John, estranged from Deborah, gradually becomes attracted to Flor; he respects and admires her niceness and sense of motherly duty. And Flor, only ever experiencing Latin macho men, has never come across a sensitive new age guy like John, who has all his priorities sorted and bares his emotions easily.



When Deborah brings Flor and Christina to stay at their summer beach house, Flor soon becomes resentful when Deborah begins to take Cristina under her wing and introduces her to the affluent, moneyed life. Deborah's endlessly errant behaviour begins to causes friction, and the household begins to spiral out of control.



Vega gives a linguistically masterful performance as Flor; she's a wide-eyed neophyte, a bravely dedicated mother, and a love-stung girl. Sandler is also perfect as the soft-spoken John, who is just as fearful of his overwhelming success as a chef, as he is of Deborah's uncontrolled, frenetic outbursts.



The film, however, belongs to Tea Leoni, she's a gifted physical comedienne, who plays a woman who just can't seem to handle the demands of modern life; she's constantly frazzled, continually overwrought, and often wound tighter than a knot. It's a pitch perfect, vivid, and fully realized portrait of well-heeled, upper middleclass mayhem and dysfunction.



The central players are like real people touched with a faultless dose of comic exaggeration and the viewer cannot help but empathize with them all. Spanglish says much about the art of belonging, whether it's within a loving family or the often-painful, moneyed American class structure. With cultures colliding, and the social stratum transforming, actually knowing where you belong, and who you are, is in the end, probably far more valuable and beneficial to the soul than assimilation and integration could ever be. Mike Leonard April 05.

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