Quinceañera opens tomorrow in NYC and Los Angeles

The reviews are in for Quinceañera and they are overwhelmingly positive:

Stephen Holden at The New York Times: "As smart and warmhearted an exploration of an upwardly mobile immigrant culture as American independent cinema has produced"

John Anderson's 3 1/2 starred review at Newsday: "An ostensibly innocent act, with vibrations that travel around forever" (the lead actors are also interviewed here)

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times: "Endearing and perceptive"

Ella Taylor of the LA Weekly: A "saucy, rowdy, heartfelt and terribly sweet movie" and ads "Quinceañera neither skirts nor condescends to the difficulties faced by poor urban communities assailed by rapid change. Like Mi Vida Loca, Allison Anders’ 1993 Echo Park girl-gangbanger melodrama, it’s an act of solidarity with a threatened minority, but one that never falls into Anders’ exuberant embrace of ethnic stereotype"

Gary M. Kramer in Gay City News: "Profoundly moving"

Dissenting voices come from indieWIRE and the conservative-leaning New York Sun (who pass similar judgements as I perhaps did in my previous post, though I am willing to reconsider in light of some of the reviews and this interview from Jennifer Merin in the New York Press).

(Above photo of Quinceañera directors, writers and lovers Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival taken by Brian Brooks for indiWIRE)