"Real Women Have Curves" (2002) directed by Patricia Cardoso

The next movie I want to analyse in terms of mother – daughter conflict is “Real women have curves”. The movie won the Audience Award in Sundance Film Festival at 2002. The film presents a stereotypical, yet believed to be true image of Latino community. It is a story of Latino girl, Ana (America Ferrera) struggling to fulfill her dreams – go to college, focus on her higher education and leave suburbs of Los Angeles where she lives. However, her mother has a different view of the daughter’s future. The movie presents just few days of the family’s life, but we can notice that the conflict was being formed through years. 

Ana is not a typical Latino woman – she is not family-oriented, does not dream about getting married and having children in young age. She pursues the right to live according to her own rules. She believes she is the one who should decide about her future education, lifestyle and boyfriend. However, here comes her mother, Carmen(Lupe Ontiveros). She is even not overprotective. She just wants to control lives of everybody. She had already stopped believing that her older daughter, Estela, would get married and she focused all her hope to Ana, and is sure she knows better what is the best for her child. 

As other members of the family seem to accept Carmen as a “home dictator”, Ana is not afraid of showing her resistance  and taking over the control. But even Ana cannot fight with her mother’s manipulative tricks. Carmen manipulates he daughter feelings by fighting with her in public, pretending to tell her the biggest secret and still complaining about Ana’s weight. In each of these tricks we can notice the mother’s attempt to keep her child at home. Every situation gives a clear message: Ana is an ungrateful child leaving her old and sick mother. What is more, an overweight girl does not match to the “real” world – looking like that she belongs to her ethnic community(fat woman is a rich woman). It seems like for Carmen the marriage is the best that can happen to a woman.

Carmen as a typical Latina matriarch is very conservative. She is sure that all woman has is her dignity and virginity. That pushes Ana to hide her relationship with her (white!) boyfriend. Ana, brought up in a way that makes her very modest about the naked body, fights with her mother’s rules and allows herself a little rebellion – in Estela’s factory she and other workers take off their clothes and reveal their imperfect bodies. 

In all that Carmen’s reluctance to her daughter’s development we can see something more than just keeping her home and following traditions. Carmen is jealous of the opportunity Ana is given. As she says to her husband she has been working until she was 13 and it was always manual work. She tells him: “Now it’s her (Ana’s) turn. She has to work”.

 
What is interesting, Ana’s father is not the main character of the movie. His spouse overshadows him. However he is really proud of Ana and wants her to attend college he does nothing to fulfill her dreams; he does not want to get involved into the conflict. 

Picture:  http://www.filmweb.pl/film/Prawdziwe+kobiety+s%C4%85+zaokr%C4%85glone-2002-35167