Escuela (School)

Filmmaker Hannah Weyer follows her 2000 film, La Boda (The Wedding) (see review in VL Online, 5/01), which chronicled the wedding of Mexican-American migrant worker Elizabeth Luis, with Escuela (School), which focuses on Elizabeth's younger sister, Liliana, as she makes her way through her freshman year in high school. Like La Boda, Weyer trains her camera on a compelling subject facing a familiar rite of passage that's complicated--sometimes painfully so--by her family's itinerant lifestyle. Liliana, one of eight children, travels each year with her family on the migrant worker circuit from Texas to California and back again. Attractive and self-confident, Liliana nevertheless suffers the same social anxieties as other adolescents, feelings that are exacerbated when she's forced to abandon newly-minted California friendships in October only to run the social gauntlet all over again in Mission, Texas. Although Liliana bravely re-enters high school (making a personal fashion statement and winsomely shrugging off her apprehensions), the frequent meetings with harried counselors, coupled with the inevitable scholastic catch-up she must play, leaves Liliana visibly frustrated and isolated from her classmates. Weyer's handling of the material is sensitive, unobtrusive, and instructive: at one point she captures a casual conversation between Liliana and a fellow student in a “Migrant Lab” class period that has all the appeal and social standing of after-school detention (a small unfortunate reality, perhaps, but also a large concern for a self-conscious teenager). Offering a thorough and nuanced portrait of the intersection of migrant life and secondary education through the story of an engaging teenager, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (A. Cantú)