La Mission
Directed by Peter Bratt
With Benjamin Bratt, Erika Alexander and Jeremy Ray Valdez
Showing in Santa Fe at UA DeVargas beginning June 11
R
Not since the film version of Michael Chabon's
Wonder Boys
have I watched a major motion picture that was not only filmed in a city, but a
neighborhood
where I've lived. Watching Michael Douglas booze it up in on-screen in Pittsburgh, where I grew up, to the sounds of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen was cool, but seeing the jarring new movie
La Mission
—shot in San Francisco's culturally rich Mission District, where I lived from 2002-2008—was far more rewarding.
La Mission
wasn't based on an acclaimed novel, but the film's heartfelt drama and realistic depiction of a gritty, harsh-reality-filled neighborhood are seriously penetrating on a level that the majority of recent urban-set movies don't reach. Directed by Peter Bratt and starring his brother Benjamin,
La Mission
—alternately funny, sad, thought-provoking and romantic—poignantly touches on sociological and economical subjects while utilizing San Francisco as a colorful backdrop.
“You can take the man out of the Mission, but you can't take the Mission out of the man,” one of lead-character Che's (Bratt) homeboys in
La Mission
says during a low-rider jaunt through North Beach when Che expresses concern about his teenage son, Jesse (Jeremy Ray Valdez), who is soon leaving for UCLA. A recovering alcoholic and ex-con, Che wants the best for his son but worries that the young Mission High senior will disown his father and his father's friends' lifestyle and traditions once he moves to LA.
In a series of events reminiscent of a similar Sopranos story-line,
La Mission
takes a sharp and emotional turn when tough-guy Che discovers that his son's excuses for repeatedly not showing up to hang out with his father's buddies (the “Mission Boyz”) are lies. In truth, Jesse is sleeping with an upper-class white guy and even dancing shirtless at a gay club in the Castro district, which is just a few blocks from the Mission District but might as well be on Mars.
A confused Che beats and disowns his son, later accepting Jesse's homosexuality on the condition that he never mention it again. Even after Jesse is shot and critically wounded by a homophobic young Mission thug, Che still violently asks his son to make a choice between an openly gay life and a life without a father.
For Mission District veterans,
La Mission
is at least partially a replay of phenomena we've seen first-hand—gentrification, hate crimes and battles over rising rents, just to name a few—but the Bratt brothers' competent expression of such serious, and far too common, stories is remarkable. Especialy if you haven't lived in the Mission,
La Mission
is a “must see” movie if I've ever seen one. It's just hard to get over how much it made me miss the vibrant neighborhood's beautiful parks and peerless taquerías.
