My Family

A man who walked from Mexico to Los Angeles in the thirties, and three generations of the family he built there. One son dies in the street, one goes to prison, one marries a woman facing deportation. The narrator is the eldest son, telling it years later. Gregory Nava directed and wrote with Anna Thomas. The cast includes Jimmy Smits, Esai Morales, Edward James Olmos, Eduardo Lopez Rojas and Jennifer Lopez. It came more than a decade after Nava's El Norte and takes up the same question from another place: what happens to the generations after migration. The hardest section is the thirties, with a woman deported to Mexico under a mass expulsion despite being an American citizen, and her journey back. The telling follows the generational epic template, with colour and light closer to fable than realism. It is among Jennifer Lopez's first substantial roles. Who it is for: viewers who like immigrant family epics and nineties American independent film. Who it is not for: anyone wanting tight narrative; the film is broad and diffuse.