This film is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who grew up Colombian in New York City. The rest of you can wallow in the 'grittiness" and the 'emotion' of the film, but those of us who have lived the immigrant experience, especially the Colombian one in New York, would find this nothing more than overwrought, sentimental tripe.
Not to say this didn't, or couldn't happen; but if two young children are suddenly homeless, while surrounded by their fellow countrymen, (Jackson Heights at one time had the highest concentration of Colombians in the nation) in the greatest, richest, most generous city in the world, and the best their mother can do for them is make them sleep in a park and force them into child labor collecting trash, then let's just say they didn't exactly win the lottery when it came having a mother. Any modern immigrant would watch this in disbelief seeing that this deserving mother was not availing herself our social safety net. "But she didn't speak English, and was brand new in the country!", you say ....
Oh please !!! No Colombian immigrant, especially by the eighties or nineties when this movie supposedly takes place, steps into this country without having a support network of family and friends ready, willing, and able to lend a hand, or guide them to the proper services should the need arise.
I do not say this lightly. I am Colombian and grew up in Queens in the sixties and seventies. My own family had tough times; we were even left homeless and destitute in the early seventies when we survived a horrific car crash that left my father hospitalized for a year.
Family, friends, neighbors, even total strangers rallied to our cause. In our case, it was the Church, in the form of Catholic Charities, who provided for us, and got us over the toughest time of our lives.
Enjoy the movie for the acting and the sentiment, but if you think you've seen 'reality' ... well then, you're probably beyond hope anyway.
The most real thing in the movie was the empanada making ... try them! .... they really are DELICIOUS!!!!
Not to say this didn't, or couldn't happen; but if two young children are suddenly homeless, while surrounded by their fellow countrymen, (Jackson Heights at one time had the highest concentration of Colombians in the nation) in the greatest, richest, most generous city in the world, and the best their mother can do for them is make them sleep in a park and force them into child labor collecting trash, then let's just say they didn't exactly win the lottery when it came having a mother. Any modern immigrant would watch this in disbelief seeing that this deserving mother was not availing herself our social safety net. "But she didn't speak English, and was brand new in the country!", you say ....
Oh please !!! No Colombian immigrant, especially by the eighties or nineties when this movie supposedly takes place, steps into this country without having a support network of family and friends ready, willing, and able to lend a hand, or guide them to the proper services should the need arise.
I do not say this lightly. I am Colombian and grew up in Queens in the sixties and seventies. My own family had tough times; we were even left homeless and destitute in the early seventies when we survived a horrific car crash that left my father hospitalized for a year.
Family, friends, neighbors, even total strangers rallied to our cause. In our case, it was the Church, in the form of Catholic Charities, who provided for us, and got us over the toughest time of our lives.
Enjoy the movie for the acting and the sentiment, but if you think you've seen 'reality' ... well then, you're probably beyond hope anyway.
The most real thing in the movie was the empanada making ... try them! .... they really are DELICIOUS!!!!