The Perez Family : A Film By Mira Nair

'The Perez Family' is a story delightfully packaged in some lush colors and spicy sensuality. The people who make up this story, all display in their traits, an array of realistic and interesting foibles whose dimensions director, Mira Nair, generously explores through her keen sense for culturally rich settings.

The film begins with an aristocratic Juan Raul Perez (Alfred Molina) watching his wife and little daughter drift through the ocean as a crab ominously clings to his foot. His reverie is interrupted and we find out that he is in prison during the Castro regime in Cuba in 1980. Juan Perez's sad life is about to change with the entry of Dorita Evita Perez (Marisa Tomei), a Cuban woman who longs for the John Wayne movies and Elvis numbers that fringe American culture. Their journeys converge on a boat to the US where they meet as political refugees heading for freedom. Juan Perez seeks to be reunited with his wife, Carmel (Anjelica Huston) and daughter after 20 years and Dorita Perez seeks the land of rock and roll. As Juan Raul and Dorita Perez feign a marriage to find immigration sponsors, there begins a fun romance with love triangles, mistaken identities and immigration frauds. The pace of the movie is pleasantly controlled without hampering either the flow of the story or the deliberate development of each character.

As always, I will refrain from narrating the whole story since I am hoping the little gist above will have piqued the reader's curiosity. Tomei's wildly sensuous performance coupled with Molina's suave and restrained persona, makes this love story absolutely worth a watch for those who like their romance sufficiently tempered by authenticity and realism. Mira Nair has been most artful in incorporating humor without the farcical buffoonery that plagues romantic comedies. The laughs in this film are summoned most often by the sometimes exasperating but mostly entertaining quirks of each superbly showcased character.

The cast is well-known and yet they bring earthiness to the personas that require it. While the guys will surely fall for the carefree and sentimental Dorita Perez, the gals will find it almost impossible not to swoon over the aloof Juan Raul. And to keep the ocassionally mercurial audience rooted, there are quite a few twists and turns during the course of this film. Mira Nair finds the nooks within a story where humor, drama, raw sensuality and soft romance, all find an appropriate place without making the film excessive and managing somehow to add more definition to the story.

It has been a while since I saw a romantic comedy which wasn't just another 'chick- flick'. So watching 'The Perez Family' was like hungrily biting into some delectable Cuban croquetas while the waves kissed my feet.