A SIFF 2006 Interview

Sundance favorite Quinceañera isn’t exactly the film you’d expect two lily-white filmmakers, one hailing all the way from Leeds, England, to write and direct. After all, what do the men behind 1994’s AIDS flick Grief and 2000’s gay porn melodrama The Fluffer know about Californian Latino culture?

“I don’t know if we were actually qualified is the amazing thing,” laughs writer/director Wash Westmoreland. “Seriously, though, in theory I think anyone can actually make a movie about anything just as long as you approach it with respect. Like, Brokeback Mountain is probably one of the greatest gay movies ever made, and that was made by a bunch of straight guys who just did their research really well.”

“Look, I feel like we are very aware there are not enough Latino filmmakers who are given a chance and there aren’t just enough Latino films out there. Yet, we were very drawn to the material and we felt like emotionally we knew what was going on within the story so we knew culturally we would have to consult our friends, our cast and our crew to help us out in order to make sure and get it right.”

“And, if we wouldn’t have had that kind of unquestioned support,” adds fellow writer/director Richard Glatzer, “from our neighbors and from our friends, I think it would have been a disaster. Because we had such unquestioned support from everybody we really felt like we are who we are and we could [make] this movie.”

Still, it had to be odd for an actor walking into an audition for a film dripping in Latino culture and find two white guys sitting in front of you. To top it off, image that same audition and it is the first one you’ve ever had the guts to go up for. “Just to hear the title and not having read the script, it still would have been odd to see these two guys when you walk into the room,” comments actress Emily Rios.

Quinceañera marks Rios’ motion picture debut, the actress lighting up the screen as the central 14-year-old Magdalena. “I love the fact that, once I read the script, [Magdalena] wouldn’t show anything on the surface, she wouldn’t any type of emotion,” states the actress. “When she was in her own little corner or on her own, however, that’s when the emotion get out. The anger and frustration and everything she’s let all that out when on her own, but she’d never show that to her father, her friends or anybody because she doesn’t feel like she’s done anything wrong.”

“She just wouldn’t swallow her pride for anything. I just loved that about her because, in a way, because she’s just this tough character and that’s how I see myself. I don’t let anybody see that they’ve gotten into me or that they have any control over my emotions.”

But how did the actress contain those emotions, bottle them up so completely and only allow them to come shimmering out through her beautifully expressive eyes? “I don’t know,” laughs the Rios. “This is only my first feature film and I’m so naive to acting in general that I really wouldn’t want to say. Everything [the directors] would tell me to do I would do it to the best of my abilities, and if I wasn’t able to than they would tell me how to do it. I would just take the direction as best I could and then try and capture that on camera, try to achieve what it is Wash and Richard were going for.”

“She’s so natural,” comments Glatzer, “just so honest as an actress you never felt for a minute that Emily would do something fake or over the top. We wanted a character, like she just stated, that kept things on the inside and didn’t always showcase their emotions, and as soon as she walked in the door and auditioned for us it was like, wow. We knew pretty much right away we had out Magdalena. She just has this innate sense of truth about her and I think that way it was so ridiculously easy for us to make such a tight shooting schedule.”

A tight shooting schedule that was made even more so by Rios’ age. Only 15 when Quinceañera was photographed, the directors could only work the actress for six hours a day according to California law. This problem was only complicated even more considering the actress is in almost every single shot of the movie. “That was definitely a worry,” states Westmoreland, “but Emily was just so good we didn’t care. And we didn’t have to. She made our job very easy. We really worked with our actors to get very interior emotions, something very similar to say the Japanese filmmaker Ozu accomplished. Very restrained. Devoid of histrionics. Emily really understood this.”

“You really have to define a range of emotions,” adds Glatzer, “and with Emily you totally become away of small nuances. When she’s crying later on in the movie or expressing herself in a way we haven’t seen before you really feel it because, in a way, you’ve gotten used to these different parameters and her performance becomes even more affecting because of that.”

“We always assumed you would get more from a single tear than you will from a big, crying to the camera scene,” interrupts Westmoreland “A single tear, if the performance is in tune and honest, can, I think, speak volumes.”