Mi vida loca (1993)

Director:

Allison Anders

Writer (WGA):

Allison Anders (written by)

Release Date:

15 July 1994 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Mothers. Warriors. Sisters. Survivors.

Plot:

Mousie and Sad Girl are childhood best friends in a contemporary Los Angeles poor Hispanic neighborhood...

Plot Keywords:

Hispanic | Los Angeles California | Dead Boy | Murder | Girl Gang

Cast

Angel Aviles	...	Sad Girl
Seidy Lopez	...	Mousie
Jacob Vargas	...	Ernesto
Devine	...	Devine
Monica Lutton	...	Chucky
Christina Solis	...	Baby Doll
Panchito Gómez	...	Joker Bird (as Panchito Gomez)
Verónica Arellano	...	Stranger
Arthur Esquer	...	Shadow
Gabriel Gonzales	...	Sleepy
Ángelo Martínez	...	Rascal (as Angelo Martinez)
Nélida López	...	Whisper (as Nelida Lopez)
Magali Alvarado	...	La Blue Eyes
Jesse Borrego	...	El Duran
Marita De Leon	...	River Valley Girl

Also Known As:

My Crazy Life

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

USA | UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Australia:R | UK:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Echo Park, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Channel Four Films

Trivia:

Jason Lee's film debut.

Quotes:

Sad Girl: When Mousie and me joined our gang, all the names were taken except Mousie and Sad Girl. Everyone said Maribel should be Mousie cuz she was so little. Sleepy said "No stupid because then we're gonna have to name Mona Sad Girl and she's not sad at all." Rascal said "Stupid , it don't matter." Sleepy was mad and kept saying "She's too happy to be Sad Girl."
[cut to Sad Girl sitting in a chair with a baby in her lap]
Sad Girl: "But they don't say that to me no more."

Soundtrack:

Doin' It to Death

Most realistic film that will ever be made about Echo Park

As Echo Park becomes a gentrified suburb, you'll see more and more movies reflecting the middle class hipster culture that's taking over the neighborhood. Mi Vida Loca is the best glimpse a lay person will ever get into the pre-gentrification Echo Park.

This is Los Angeles, shortly after the Rodney King riots. A city in transition. A city seeing a brief time of peace, with gang rivalries being relegated to squabbles over fancy pickup trucks. A city where poor minority residents thought their neighborhoods would be rebuilt for them, when in reality they were being rebuilt for upper class newcomers. A grand Ponzi scheme sent many to dream homes in "nice suburbs" like Monrovia and Duarte, purchased with shady sub prime loans, with signs en espanol going up on their old apartment buildings in South Central and downtown to attract Mexican immigrants. The framework for 21st century Los Angeles is under way. But in the meantime, Mousie (Seidy Lopez, "Resurrection Blvd") and Sad Girl (Angel Aviles, "Desperado"), two lifelong friends, and members of the Echo Parque Locas gang, each have a kid by the same guy, drug dealer and Echo Parque gang member Ernesto (Jacob Vargas, "Selena", "Road Dogz").

A death in their tight knit circle changes everything, including many preexisting grudges. But a real wild card gets thrown into their hand when a homegirl, "Giggles" (Marlo Marron, "My Funny Valentine"), is released from prison, and tries to steer the homegirls away from the street life, and into a life in "COMPUUUUTERS!!!". Her very astute warning of what the future will be like, likely learned while reading in prison, falls on deaf ears, but her independent, entrepreneurial spirit does not, as she leads the homegirls through a plan to get the best out of a pickup truck in which the ownership thereof is in dispute, not only within the Echo Park gang, but also with a member of the rival River Valley gang, El Duran (Jesse Borrego, "Bound By Honor: Blood In Blood Out").

A correspondence between a beautiful yet reclusive younger sister of Sad Girl, La Blue Eyes (Magali Alvarado), who's "trip" is getting an education and avoiding the gang life, and a "torcedo" (guest of the California prison system), eventually puts La Blue Eyes front and center of the tragic climax of these intertwining stories.

This is a story of the Echo Park barrio, circa the early '90s. It is now a period piece, thanks to the barrio barely existing anymore. A look at the old Los Angeles, that only exists in small pockets of a heavily gentrifying city. Again, one should not mistake this for a gang story, as when the story takes place, gangs in LA saw a relative time of post-Rodney King riot peace. The motives behind the peace have been disputed, and still are. But the waters were still for a brief time, and a feeling of hope, albeit small and cynical, did circulate through LA's black and Latino communities, that lasted until about the late '90s, when some gangs started to directly target victims based on race, and when, more importantly, the realization that there would be no real urban renewal with their best interests set in. Enter modern day Los Angeles. As tough as the old Echo Park barrio looks in this film, today's violence, lack of resources or living wage jobs, neighborhoods full of foreclosed homes literally overran by mountain lions (google the photos), makes the era of Mi Vida Loca seem not so loca afterall.

8 out of 10.