Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 49

pits provides the glue that holds 'My Family' together My Family: Mi Familia Director: GREGORY NAVA; Starring: JIMMY SMITS, ESAI MORALES, EDUARDO LOPEZ ROJAS; 120 minutes; THE LITTLE ART Rl Violence, vulgar language, sexual situations Good Poor -kit-it Excellent Fair and he is just as naturally idolized by their youngest son, Jimmy, who will grow into a tough, silent and troubled man (Jimmy Smits) who returns to the barrio from prison tatooed and taciturn. Jimmy's story dominates the second half of My Family and exposes the first half for what it is: a brightly illustrated string of anecdotes, made interesting by the performances and the barrio backdrop. But with Jimmy, the film finally has a character of complexity and stature, one that rises above the stereotypes or at least Smits makes it appear that way. Jimmy is not a committed gangster, nor does he have the street swagger of Chucho. But neither does he feel the family connection that has sustained his parents.

He is not just a man without an alliance, he seems to be a man without a soul. The way writer-director Nava allows him to find both borders on the obvious, but Smits manages to make it all believable in a performance that is as beautifully modulated and unsentimentalized as the rest of movie is erratic and overly romantic. When the film ends on an elegant grace note that transcends the sappy narration, it is Jimmy we will remember, a black sheep whose rejoining of the flock delivers them, and the film, from becoming just another tender family story. With Jimmy, the film finally has a character of complexity and stature or at least Smits makes it appear that way. poverty of postrevolutionary Mexico, literally walked from the south to Los Angeles, a trek that took an entire year.

In California, he was taken in by a distant relative he had never met, a man known as California, because he was born there when it was still part of Mexico. Industrious and optimistic, Jose joined his fellow countrymen on the daily walk across the bridge to West Los Angeles, where he worked as a gardener. On one job, he met his wife-to-be, Maria (Jenny Gago), who is to give him two children before, while pregnant with their third, being deported in a post-Depression roundup of brown-skinned people. Back in Mexico, Maria gives birth to their third, Chucho, before embarking on the long trip back to Los Angeles; when the child nearly drowns in a river accident, Maria sees it as an omen, an omen that manifests itself more than 20 years later. In the meantime, she and Jose raise a bossy daughter who becomes a nun and another studious son who is to become a lawyer.

Meanwhile, Chucho (Esai Morales) grows into a pachuko, the East Los Angeles version of a rock 'n' roll rebel, who rejects his family's culture and the American dream. He, naturally, is destined for a tragic end, raH bW 1 BY TERRY LAWSON Rim Critic My Family: Mi Familia, director Gregory Nava's loving look at three generations of a Mexican-American family in East Los Angeles, is less of a movie than an elaborate scrap-book, immaculately constructed and lovingly maintained. It isn't art, and it isn't really a coherent history, but it's wonderful to look at nevertheless. It also features what is, so far, the best screen performance of 1995, by Jimmy Smits. Unfortunately, Smits, a second-generation member of the Sanchez clan, doesn't show up until My Family is half over, but when he does, he gives the film the gravity and meaning that it sorely needs and deserves The film's first half is given over to the story, narrated by writer Paco Sanchez (Edward James Olmos), of how his father Jose Sanchez, having lost his family in the A family album that is beautiful to behold.

rou won't soon forget this 'Amateur' amnesiac's story indulging them. Hartley is successful to the point that the humor remains droll and Amateur Director: HAL HARTLEY; Starring: 5ABELLE HUPPERT, MARTIN DONOVAN; 1105 minutes; THE NEW NEON MOVIES Violence, sexual themes, vulgar language ink I 9T I Excellent Good Fair Poor unforced and his style, ever-removed and highly arch, remains uncompro-mised. To get into a Hartley film is to give yourself over to his vision, which is intensely myopic and deliberately nuanced and absurdly fun. The best part of Amateur is watching Huppert use her constrained and controlled passion in the service of comedy, and her obvious affection for her character and her good girl-bad girl conflict adds a sensuousness to Hartley's symmetry that was been missing (probably purposefully) from his previous films. Though Amateur still holds the human race at arm's length, Huppert suggests just how much TERRY LAWSON Martin Donovan plays Thomas, a man whose amnesia causes significant changes in morality in fun it might be to embrace it for a little while.

It isn't exactly warmth, but it definitely cracks Hartley's protective cool. im Critic ith the release of Amateur, his fourth feature film, director Hal Hartley has undoubtedly tired of seeing his work lievable Truth (about how nobody believes it), Trust (about how we need it) and Simple Men (about a couple of them). Amateur is actually more, well, allegorical, if you'll forgive the intellectualizing, which Hartley might not. (He has been quoted as saying that Amateur is his idea of an action movie, though it might not be anybody else's.) Amateur is about people who get in over their heads, only to have their hearts pull them through. It's a simple enough idea, but with Hartley, everything gets somewhat overcomplicated.

This begins with his characters, who are never what they might appear to be, a concept taken to amusing extremes here. The film's protagonist has no idea what he is himself, because he's an amnesiac (Hartley regular Martin Donovan) who wakes up in a Manhattan alley with a big bump on his head, and he has no idea how he arrived there. Nevertheless, he is given sanctuary by an ex-nun named Isa-belle (Isabelle Huppert), who has left the convent to pursue a career as a free-lance pornogra-pher. She relocated to New York on the instructions of the Virgin Mary, who came to her in a vision. Though Isabelle claims to be a nymphomaniac, it turns out she is still a virgin, a condition of which she hopes her new friend can relieve her, which presum ably will be beneficial to her new endeavors.

But her new friend, whose name will turn out to be Thomas, is reluctant to become so involved with someone he barely knows, despite the fact that he knows her better than anyone else, including himself. Ironically, Thomas' scruples have been acquired only with his amnesia, because in his past life, he was a vicious white slaver and pornog-rapher who had forced his wife, Sofia (Elina Lowensohn), to become his biggest star and primary asset. As it happens, it was Sofia who pushed him out the window and, acting on the assumption he is dead, has put in motion a series of events involving international smugglers and Thomas' former accountant (Damian Young), whose involvement will result in the shock of his life. All this skullduggery forces Hartley to work a note or two above the usual pitch, which means that Amateur almost reaches middle C. Like reluctant rocker J.J.

Cale or his well-cast female lead Huppert (he fashioned the role for her after she wrote him a letter declaring herself simpatico). Hartley is a devoted apostle of the close-to-the-chest-is-always-best school, and Amateur finds him attempting to be involved with his characters' feelings without ferred to as "idiosyncratic" and Give in and enjoy 'the ruirky," but as long as Hartley ikes movies about ex-nuns who ite pornography in coffee ops and white slavers who are deemed by amnesia and love, Steve Harvey will probably just have to mirk and bear it. But while no one would accuse artley of making any dramatic from ABC's "Me epartures with Amateur, a case wild be made that he has upped Showtime at the 433-LAFF ante a notch; this time his Apollo" on sequiturs are in the service of imething besides attitude, and V.I Rated PG point is not wholly contained Hotel by Days Inn South the title, as was the case with wonderful debut The Unbe ill fill AM.