Luminarias

Rated R, for language and sexuality. When a spicy Latin divorce attorney finds herself guilty of falling for her white and Jewish opposing council, her three single friends choose sides in the ongoing and often hilarious debate over race and sex.

Well, it isn't council, but counsel, as in attorney. A review in Imdb has the same error in a synopsis attributed to Echo Bridge Home Entertainment.

4 successful Chicanas meet to drink and chat about men, sex, being Mexican, and their problems arising from the combination of men, sex, being Mexican and having problems. One of them gives up sex as a sacrifice for Lent, and beseeches La Virgen de Guadalupe for strength to remain celibate all 40 days. An attorney defends a young Latina in court against her abusive husband, who wants joint custody of their son, and soon catches her husband kissing (of all things) a white woman. A therapist striving to be white, or accepted by whites, does not visit her mother in East LA and can't speak Spanish, yet brandishes a Chicana accent when she calls herself a Chicana. The fourth of the band can't find a decent man, has unresolved issues (having being called fea as a child among them), but soon falls for a Korean man.

The movie tries to explore racial pride, emotional ambiguity, and uncertainty in the face of 40th birthdays. It is in turns funny, touching, even insightful, but it does not work completely. There are too many cliches and stereotypes (the wise Latino man who happens to be a professor at UCLA, played by Cheech Marin with a wisp of beard under his lower lip that looks less Dizzy Gillespie than, what? Mandarin? and the uninhibited Latina aunts who don't watch their mouths but do watch male asses).

Yet, there are some nice performances and good points made. Evelina Fernandez plays the main character, Andrea, the attorney who prides herself on being a Latina, excoriates whites, and defends women against machismo. She falls for a white Jewish attorney, resists her husband returning after having announced he would marry a white woman, and lectures her son on not letting rage (sloppily defined as a legacvy of colonial oppression, or some such thing) overwhelm his Latino passion. In a nice twist, at the end the son, Joey, announces he has a girlfriend named Laura Johnson; his mother assumes she's white, and is surprised, when she meets her, to see she's black.

Still, a good film. 3 stars, of 5.