Tijuana Makes Me Happy

In an era of reality television shows that feel even more scripted and formulaic than the latest Hollywood romantic comedy, it is easy to be cynical about the capacity of today's film and television industries for genuine storytelling. More often than not when the lights come up, we in the audience are left with the feeling that if art reflects life, then our particular existence is some off-kilter cross between the melodramatic and the ridiculous, with all the depth of Norbit and the pathos of American Idol.

I was rejuvenated when I left the IFC Center in New York City after seeing Tijuana Makes Me Happy, directed by Dylan Verrechia and produced by James Lefkowitz, which won the Grand Jury prize for Best Narrative Feature at Slamdance in Park City this year. A coming-of-age story about a young boy growing to manhood in Playas de Tijuana, Verrechia and Lefkowitz's film is an invigorating fusion of fiction and reality that rises to the challenge of powerful storytelling and fun, innovative film-making.

Tijuana Makes Me Happy is all the more compelling because the actors in the film are actual Tijuana residents essentially playing themselves. Jhonny and Indio are played by father/son duo Pablo Tendilla Rocha and Pablo Tendilla Ortiz. In real life, Pablo and Pablito live with the rest of their family--a mother and two sisters--but they do a marvelous job channeling the friction and co-dependence of a father and son alone together in the world, trying to negotiate each other's needs and expectations. In fact, there are no professional actors in the cast, and the scenes are refreshingly authentic as a result.

With subdued pacing and un-staged shots of the Tijuana red-light district at night, the morning ceremony at a local school, the ever-expanding development of bright pink houses where the families live, and the local slums, the film has a documentary sensibility that is enlivened by the carefully constructed story the characters live out.

What it lacks in sharpness, Tijuana Makes Me Happy more than makes up for in sincerity and pizazz. The title song will be stuck in your head for weeks, and the poignancy of Indio's adolescent struggle and redemption never fades. That Verrechia and Lefkowitz have succeeded in creating a universally appealing Tijuana-based tale at a time when the American government and countless citizens regularly denounce people from south of the border is an accomplishment and a contribution.

Tijuana Makes Me Happy is a coming of age story shot with unprofessional actors in a quasi-documentary style. In the short span of time the film covers, fifteen year old Indio has to make decisions regarding sex, crime and friendship (with a rooster). The plot details are fairly simplistic and linear, but that certainly doesn't take away from the film in any way. That the film seemingly has no moral perspective about the dubious activities in the film, really gives the film more credit in my mind. It's light-hearted approach to activities such as cockfighting, prostitution and drug trafficking seems far more realistic and gripping when told by the amoral eye.

Perhaps I'm partial to films photographed in Mexico, however, given my love of Central America in general. Even the most ordinary scenes give me great pleasure when I see them on the screen because they are so different than America. I did appreciate the story (although, I could have lived without the spelling errors in the subtitles), but the vision of Tijuana and its inhabitants reeled me in.

I love this movie! I've check it out at the Festival of Tijuana, en el Jai Alai. It brings together so many various aspects and social levels of the city, and each and everyone of those in the movie are great people. The people in the movie seem to be talented actors. I was surprised when the actors came on stage and I realized that they were not. It was the first time they acted. The father was a real mechanic. The cop a real cop. The red light district dancer a real dancer. The rooster trainer real too. Everything is the real deal. And it all seems so naturally as if if it was actually happening. I mean a great piece of directing. When I spoke to the director after the screening, he gave all the credit to those in the film. Speaking to him I could sense real love and respect for his actors. Again best acting I have seen in a long time -- in a Mexican film, or an American film for that matter (for me they always perform to much over the top). So definitely not one of these Hollywood formula movie. But a true singular story that respect the people that have participated in the making of the movie, and in large, I believe the people watching the movie. The director Verrechia has done an important thing for the people in the film and for showing Tijuana its cultural richness as well as its poesy.