From Prada to Nada

Movie: From Prada to Nada

Cast:    Camilla Belle              (Nora Dominguez)

            Alexa Vega                (Mary Dominguez)

            Adriana Barraza         (Aurelia Jimenez)

Genre: romantic comedy

Synopsis: This is billed as a re-write of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.  Camilla and Alexa are daughters of a wealthy Hispanic businessman.  Their mother died some years ago.  They live in a mansion in Los Angeles with servants, gardener’s, a cook, etc.  Camilla is the responsible one.  She is currently in law school.  Although Alexa is in college, her mission in life is to shop shop shop.  Neither of them have really acknowledged their heritage nor do they speak any Spanish.

Then their father dies unexpectedly.  The sisters are hit with two surprises.  The first is that they have a half-brother they never knew about.  The second is that their father was deeply in debt – and they are not destitute.  They end up having to move out of the mansion.  They end up living with their late mother’s aunt is East Los Angeles.  To say this is a culture shock is to put it mildly.  The movie follows the sisters adjust to life in East L.A. and learn that a Mexican heritage is actually pretty cool.  Naturally, both sisters go through romantic crises – but everything works out in the end.

My two cents: I had never heard of this movie before it opened locally.  I found it to be a real gem.  It was great fun to watch these two girls – who had considered themselves to be rich white girls – learn what it means to be poor and Hispanic in East L.A.  (Of course, this Blog is written from the perspective of a white male who really might not know what he is talking about here.)  While their romantic travails might not be overly realistic, they provided the movie with  a happy ending.

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