Real Women Have Curves

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Movie Details

• Genre: Drama
• Release Date: 2002-01-01 Sundance '02
• Running Time: 85 min.
• Director: Patricia Cardoso
• Cast: America Ferrera, Lupe Ontiveros, Ingrid Oliu, Brian Sites, George Lopez
• Producer: George LaVoo, Effie T. Brown
• Writer: Josefina Lopez, George LaVoo
• Distributor: HBO Films
• Official Site: Real Women Have Curves Official Site

Another low-budget, woman-made indie about a savvy, chunky female from an overprotective immigrant family, this one is way smarter than That Dumb-Ass Movie About the Greek Chick and Her Big Fat Wedding. The heroine is Ana (the fantastic America Ferrera), a high school senior who lives in East L.A., but who takes the city bus every morning to Beverly Hills High, where she's about to graduate with an awesome GPA and the potential for a university scholarship. Unfortunately, Ana's main obstacle to success is Carmen (Lupe Ontiveros), her neurotic, rosary-sucking drama-queen mother, who believes that Ana deserves a life of hard, low-paying labor like the one she has had. Though the movie is conflicted, and far from perfect, it proves adept at tackling numerous messy goals all at once--among which is making a bodacious statement about women's sexuality and body-image problems. (Kate Sullivan)