Grade: A+

Verdict: Tasty film that serves up pure entertainment.

Details: Starring America Ferrera, Lupe Ontiveros, George Lopez. Directed by Patricia Cardoso. Screenwriters: George LaVoo, Josefina Lopez. Rated PG-13 for sexual content and some language. 90 minutes.

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Review:

Ana, who is finishing high school when the film "Real Women Have Curves" begins, exists between states of being. She is becoming more woman than girl. Growing away from her Latino home, she is more American than Mexican. And though overweight, she is smart enough to discover that she is beautiful, somewhere between voluptuous ideal and the unmarryable gordita her mother calls her.

When Ana, played with sharp instincts by newcomer America Ferrera, looks into a mirror, she seems to see something new every time. As her life changes -- she is struggling to follow a college scholarship despite her family's insistence that she stay in the Los Angeles barrio home and work in her sister's dress-making shop -- her sexuality blossoms, her relationship with her mother sours and she makes her first significant steps toward adulthood.

"Real Women," based on the play by co-screenwriter Josefina Lopez, is pitch-perfect in tone. Firmly entrenched in Mexican American culture without the insistent need to be about the culture, it's one of the best Latino films ever made. Ana lives in a multigenerational home, and her need to escape -- not out of spite, but to pursue her own uncertain future alone -- is handled in the film smartly, realistically and without clichéd melodrama.

Which is not to say the film is lifeless. Lupe Ontiveros, the veteran actress best known for her role in "Selena" as the Tejano star's killer, is outstanding as Ana's mother, Carmen. Ontiveros stands out in every scene she's in, ferociously playing a mother who is at turns loving, cruel, devoted and selfish. Why should her daughter have a better life than she did?, Carmen asks at one point, bucking the idea that all parents want a brighter future for their kids. For Carmen, Ana's pursuit of college is abandonment, a rejection of the working life that she had no choice but to endure.

Carmen, remarkably, is both hilarious and sympathetic. When she breathlessly describes a Spanish-language soap opera, her daughter mocks her, guessing every plot twist before it's described. That Carmen is both aware of her daughter's scorn, but unwilling to be galled by it, is just one note in their complex tightrope act of a relationship.

As strong a character as Carmen is (and Ontiveros all but steals the movie), the story is about Ana. Her summer's journey -- through first love, through arguments with her family, through perceptions of her own body -- is vividly captured. The film wisely expands the scope of the play, which took place entirely in a steamy sewing warehouse owned by Ana's sister Estela (touchingly played by Ingrid Oliu). By fleshing out Ana's world, "Real Women Have Curves" is a richer, more universal experience. When Ana makes her daily bus trip to the Beverly Hill High school she attends among teenagers more affluent than her, the camera lingers on barrio street corners, children playing, business signs that are worlds removed from the trimmed hedges and gated homes of her destination.

But it's the family dynamics that count in "Real Women." The grandfather who slips away to go out dancing when he's supposed to be seeing a movie with Ana; the closed-door confrontation between mother and daughter that stays painfully unresolved; the suspicion leveled against a teacher who wants to help, but is seen as a kidnapper, breaking a family apart with an acceptance letter to Columbia University -- these are the details that "Real Women" gets right.

— Omar Gallaga, The Austin American-Statesman