Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 53

E3 Austin American-Statesman Friday, October 25, 2002 Austin jVmcrian-jStatcsrnan statesman.com 'lie Nicola Goode HBO MARKET FILMS Through America Ferrera's eyes. Ana struggles between her family's life and the life she wants to create in 'Real Women Have cn foyirts Keai women has right flavor for barrio tale 2 I A li I A Si uoming-oi-age drama tosses melodrama for authenticity By Omar Gallaga AMERICAN-STATESMW STAFF Ana, who is finishing high school when the film "Real Women Have Curves" begins, exists between states of being. She is becoming more woman than girl. Growing away from her Latino home, she is more American than Mexican. And though over- weight, she is smart enough to discover that she is beautiful, somewhere between voluptuous ideal and the unmarryable gordita her mother calls her.

Mark's not Cary, Thandie's not Audrey, and even Paris can't save this dull, unhip remake of 'Charade' By Chris Garcia AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM CRITIC You could pass off Jonathan Demme's eclair-light remake of the 1963 romantic thriller "Charade" as a fun, sweet, homage to the urban verve and cinematic cheek of the French New Wave. And you'd be right on one count: "The Truth About Charlie" is an adoring, if terribly naive, homage to the New Wave. But it is not much fun, missing with breathtaking totality the wit and roguish spunk of the movement that gave us Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and a bundle of other mighty V. I i 'Real "i Women Have Curves' When Ana, played with sharp instincts by newcomer America Ferrera, looks into a mirror, she seems to see something new every time. As her life changes she is struggling to follow a college scholarship despite her fam ily insistence that she stay in the Los Aneeles barrio home and work in talents.

The best thing to do is to If. just pass off "Charlie" to the bulging dustbin of failed remakes. Besides Mark Wahlberg's appalling performance is he dead? ani-matronic? the only her sister's dress-making shop her sexuality blossoms, her relationship with her mother sours and she makes her first significant steps toward adulthood. "Real Women," based on the play by co-screenwriter Josefina Lopez, is pitch-perfect in tone. Firmly entrenched in Mexican American culture without the insistent need to be about the culture, it's one of the best Latino films ever made.

Ana lives in a multigenerational home, and her need to escape not out of spite, but to pursue her own uncertain future alone is handled in the film smartly, realistically and without cliched melodrama. Which is not to say the film is lifeless. Lupe Ontiveros, the veteran actress best known for her role in "Selena" as the Tejano star's killer, is outstanding as Ana's mother. Carmen. Ontiveros stands out in every scene she's in, ferociously playing a mother who is at turns loving, cruel, devoted and selfish.

thing I could think about during this pointless Paris escapade was: What has happened to Jonathan Demme? Once a vaunted and The Truth About Charlie' .1 .1 idiosyncratic filmmaker, with a raft of nervy, character-rich films suffused in quirky Americana Band," "Melvin and Howard," "Something Demme has embraced commercial bloat and not let go. The rousing box office success of "The Silence of the Lambs," a serviceable genre piece, led to the damply pious "Philadelphia" and the clunky "Beloved." Demme swapped everything interesting he was doing for artistic irrelevance. This brings us to "Truth About Charlie," a sigh-and-head-shake sort of misfire, whose existence could be blamed on last year's remake of "Ocean's Eleven," bad movie that Why should her daughter have a better life than she Carmen asks at one point, bucking the idea that all parents want a brighter future for their kids. For Carmen, Ana's pursuit of college is abandonment, a rejection of the working life that she had no choice but to endure. Carmen, remarkably, is both hilarious and sympathetic.

When she breathlessly describes a Spanish-language soap opera, her daughter mocks her, guessing every plot twist before it's described. That Carmen is both aware of her daughter's scorn, but unwilling to be galled by it, is just one note in their complex tightropeactofarelationship. As strong a character as Carmen is (and Ontiveros all but steals the movie), the story is about Ana. Her summer's journey Ken Regan CAMERAS Thandie Newton and Mark Wahlberg don't have the star power that gave the original 'Charade' its appeal. See TRUTH, E5 through first love, through arguments with her family, through perceptions of her own body is vividly captured.

The film wisely expands the scope of the play, which took place entirely in a steamy sewing warehouse owned by Ana's sister Estela (touchingly What's Demme thinking? We asked him. Hear what he had to say, E5 See WOMEN, E4 'Satin Rouge' moves to a joyful beat Tale of a Tunisian woman's awakening is familiar, fun and fulfilling By Moira Macdonald THE SEATTLE TIMES "Satin Rouge" is an utterly conventional film set in an utterly unconventional place (at least to 'Satin down-at-the-heels cabaret From the moment we first see her, gazing into a mirror as she dispiritedly cleans her apartment, we know because we've seen movies like this before that soon she'll be taking down her hair, wearing more body-conscious clothing, and eventually finding love and happiness. But first-time feature director Raja Amari has a few surprises in store, not the least of which is the way Lilia does find love. And "Satin Rouge," as its title would indicate, is a film drenched in irresistible color and texture. It's a familiar journey rendered exotic by its locale in this Tunisian town, the red-light district is indeed lined with red lights and givenajoyousbeat in the shimmying of the cabaret dancers, whose pleasure in their own gyrations is infectious.

Lilia, whose teenage daughter Salma (Hend El Fahem) is becoming increasingly distant at first seems a woman drained of color; her thin face looks pinched, and she wears voluminous, homemade-looking housedresses that look like she's hiding inside them. On her first visit to the cabaret See ROUGE, E4 American eyes), and it's perfectly charming not in spite of its conventionality, but, in an odd way, because of it Hiam Abbass brings Rouge' 1 Vfff i freshness and confidence to her role as Lilia, a lonely Tunisian widow who finds fulfillment in belly-dancing at a ZUTULlifl FILMS Hiam Abbass plays a widowed mother who finds her freedom in belly-dancing..