How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer

An amazingly intriguing piece of 3 different generations of Mexican/ American women in small town America driven by their search for love and honesty. The young director shows in depth the oddity and boredom that come with the life given to her 3 amazingly performed lead characters. The most wonderful casting of real people faces lets you be in their world and experience their love/pain, while underlining this with beautiful artistic images that seem like modern paintings at times. The choice of 35mm anamorphic also emphasizes the emptiness and overwhelmingly loneliness felt for this desert town. The 3 beautiful, funny and different story lines leave you with loaded emotional questions about love and following your heard. This is a must see independent movie!

I also agree with Tmvaz-1 and Wildcat. This film is terrible. I know it has been to Sundance, but why i do not know. I give credit and my three votes for the three lead actresses. They are phenomenal and the filmmakers should thank their graces that they have good performances cause without that, this film doesn't have anything. It is over 2 hours...feels like 4 and has some graphic scenes that are NOT necessary. The shots are very long and boring. My guess is they didn't get good coverage. As Wildcat and Tmvaz were saying, the shots weren't that great so i'm guessing it was poorly planned. Also, for some reason the people in the scene were always on like the far left of the screen...why? This film builds up to like 4 funny moments in the film and each moment has like a 30 minute build up. The grandmother is a fantastic actress and completely makes this movie bearable along with her two co-stars, but the story is incredibly boring and the movie is really just about sex. It really is a poorly told story. Maybe if it was like 45 minutes shorter, it would seem like a better movie.

Nice example of life in a small Arizona community before the influence of so many outsiders. Myself, growing up in a very similar community in southern Arizona was very familiar. They loneliness of being single and with a small pool of others in the same situation reminded me of my Mother ,sister and niece and what it was like for them. In a town of 212 people we often dated the same people,knew what everyone's business was and felt that a lot of relationships were incestuous,not in reality but because we grew up in a brotherly ,sisterly way since early childhood. The very girls I grew up with and thought of as sisters were my future dating partners. Just having someone there is a comfort especially as we get older. I think this explains why some stay in bad relationships,the fear of being alone. This film reminded me of my youth and it didn't matter that these were Hispanic women. I have found that economic ties bind you far more than racial ones. The movie was a little jerky and needed a better sound track but I liked it. I saw what must have been an autobiographical treatment for the director. Well done!

This is a wonderful film! I just saw it last night at the Riverrun Film Festival in Winston-Salem, NC last night with a packed house that was was beyond satisfied! Aside from the wonderful performances (especially Elizabeth Pena), the writing is insightful, especially knowing how young the filmmaker is. It is funny, touching, and REAL. The non-verbal scenes are especially strong and show a side of women we rarely see. We need more films like this that at fully explore the dynamics of being a woman is today's society. The characters are realistic and the story is compelling. The "Greek Chorus" of older Latino men that are seen throughout the film could be a film unto themselves. Most importantly, this film exposes us to a culture we don't know enough about. Most men won't appreciate this film, (a lot of the references will fly over their heads) but the First Wives Club audience will flock to it, as will senior citizens groups who will sing it's praises! If you enjoyed Real Women Have Curves you will LOVE this one! (same lead actress too!) This is a "chick flick" film with whole lot of heart.

I normally don't write reviews but after reading some of the negative things about HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS SPENT THEIR SUMMER I felt inclined to say something. I've seen this film twice now. Once at Sundance and then more recently at the Latino Internation Film Festival. Both times I can't help but get caught up in the sheer scope of the film. Normally scope is applied to a movie that covers a ton of different locations and makes the audience think that they've wandered the globe. That's not what this scope is. The scope here (and maybe that's the wrong word) is that the audience feels like we're part of this small town. We feel it's inner workings, we feel what life is like there, like we live there (not unlike what LONESTAR felt like.) It's fully imagined and is a total compliment to Riedel's strength as a director. Yes, the film isn't conventional as in it doesn't lay out everything in a tight, conventional structure...but I don't think that it's meant to. I think it was meant to again, let the audience get a taste of this small town, let us see what it feels like so when the characters in this film start to experience love, we feel how much it means to them because we live there too. Because it's the little things in life that make us happy, change us...and that's what this film is about and does so well. It shows us all this, but in a realistic way. In a way that US audiences aren't used to being shown. It's a strong vision with good writing, good acting, and a lot of heart. That's not say that it's an art movie either that's going to bore you. Because it doesn't. What it does is transport you to a definite time and place and does so in an entertaining way. Seriously. The humour here is great and again, dealt with in a realistic way, so that when things happen, we can relate. At least I could. And so could the two audiences I saw it with. People complain about not having any real movies, movies that aren't cookie cutter, and that are different. This is all of the above and something that I think most people would enjoy if they just give it a shot.