East of Hope Street

Color, NR (mature themes, language, sexual situations), 88 min., DVD $14.98, VHS $14.98

DVD: no extras

Street: Sept. 21, Prebook: Aug. 27

First Run: L, Nov. 1999, NA

Cast: Jade Herrera (Tortilla Soup), Roxanne Coyne (Bulldog), Asanio Lara (Bare Truth), Greer Bohanon (A Thin Line Between Love and Hate), Tim Russ (TV'S Star Trek Voyager), Magda Rivera (Hoodlum)

MAVERICK LATINO

Story Line: Alicia Montalvo (Herrera) escapes from her native and violence-ridden El Salvador to live with her crack-addicted aunt in Los Angeles. When child welfare authorities step in, they separate Alicia from her brother and place her in a foster home, where a series of events and misunderstands lands the now-pregnant girl in a group home for wayward teens. She makes her first real friend (Bohanon) and after much struggle, graduates from high school and moves on with her life.

Bottom Line: This low-budget feature by first-time director Nate Thomas shows the gritty side of the immigrant experience, capturing a system full of well-meaning people who sometimes can't do much to help those in need. East of Hope Street smacks of after-school special sentimentality (happy ending included), but it also has the odd watchability of those films that tend to draw viewers in just to show how bad other people have it. And it does convincingly portray the social systems--the courts, child welfare workers and so on--that are overburdened and lack the funding, energy or legal recourse to get the job done. The film won a slew of small awards back when it was released, and it is certainly timely now, adding an interesting voice to the discourse on immigration policies and the American Dream. --Mayna Bergmann

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