Victor Vargas believes he’s beautiful. In the first shot of Raising Victor Vargas, Victor, played by Victor Rasuk, runs his tongue around his lips and slowly strips. The camera pans back to reveal a plump young woman on the bed, waiting for him. We later learn this is ‘Fat Donna’ (played by Donna Maldonado).
Unfortunately for Victor, his little sister Vicki (Krystal Rodriguez) finds out about Donna and threatens to ruin his reputation. Victor struggles to save it by attempting to lure ‘Juicy Judy’ (Judy Marte) into being his girl. Eventually, Judy gives in, but only by word.
Meanwhile, Victor’s grandmother, (Altagracia Guzman), heartily disapproves of his sexual antics and threatens to throw him out. It is up to Victor to pacify his grandmother, win Judy’s trust and help navigate his younger siblings through adolescence.
Raising Victor Vargas tells a story about the pains of adolescence. Peter Sollett, the director and screenwriter, talked about his experience of making the film in a recent interview.
‘We didn’t give the cast a script,’ Sollett said. ‘They would have to build the foundation of the scene on their own. I would shape it and sculpt it and make it support the structure overall.’
Sollett said this method helped because the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the film was set, was something that the actors were familiar with, but he was not. Originally the movie was to be set in his childhood neighborhood in ‘Bensonhurst,’ Brooklyn.
‘I wrote something about the neighborhood I grew up in, but the kids we were meeting (for casting) had very little to offer,’ he said. ‘They were mimicking what they were seeing on TV; it wasn’t at all what we were looking for.’
Eventually, Sollett ended up doing casting calls around his neighborhood in the Lower East Side and that’s how he acquired the cast of Raising Victor Vargas. ‘These kids came in and were really great and so we decided to do it with them,’ said Sollett.
He encouraged them to pick names of their own characters. Most of the actors chose their own names for convenience, making life easier for the first-timers.
One of the more phenomenal first-time actors is Guzman. She plays the part of Victor’s grandmother to perfection. She deals with Victor with a mix of frustration and love. She does what she can to take care of the family as a whole. More than anything, she wants them to be a cohesive family. Rasuk and Marte also convey a sense of what adolescent love is really like. Their chemistry is palpable, yet they manage to incorporate the awkward pauses that is such a part of young love.
As Victor, Rasuk changes from an overconfident, swaggering boy, to something more of a man. He realizes that Judy will not tolerate his bragging and learns to care for her as a person instead of as an object. In turn, Marte deftly portrays Judy’s gradual softening toward Victor.
Sollett’s directs the movie well and does not waste any characters. His film deals with common themes that are universally identifiable. ‘It has to do with people dealing with the gap between what they are and what they think they are and people learning not to take those nearest and dearest to them for granted,’ Sollett said.
It is themes like these that Sollett said he hopes to continue with in the future. He said it was important to use simple, everyday events to communicate emotions. Sollett said, ‘There are things we all have in common as human beings; I think that’s really beautiful.’
