Movie review: 'Bella'

‘Bella’ all sides and no entree

By Tasha Robinson

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2 stars (out of four)

The problem with films as jaggedly episodic as “Bella” is that if all the side stories don’t connect smoothly enough, it becomes too easy to see them as separate entities, a series of short stories rather than a single narrative. Sometimes that works to a film’s advantage, with the stronger installments supporting the weaker ones. But more commonly, as with “Bella,” the melodrama and cheap theatrics of the story’s off-center segments drag the whole thing down. In his feature directorial debut, Alejandro Monteverde hits the mark as often as he misses it, but the film’s problems linger longer than its successes.

Eduardo Verastegui stars as Jose, a half-Mexican, half-Puerto Rican soccer superstar whose career ended with a tragedy that transformed him from a clean-cut go-getter into a soulful, shaggy Jesus Christ look-alike. Monteverde and co-writer Patrick Million withhold that tragedy’s exact nature for most of the film’s run time, but they telegraph it well in advance, piling on the flashbacks and repeatedly bringing the film to a halt so Jose can stare longingly at the little girls who briefly enter his orbit on the streets of New York.

That obsession with children helps explain why he walks away from his chef job when his slick restaurateur brother fires waitress Nina (Tammy Blanchard) for showing up late too many mornings. Once she tells Jose she’s pregnant, he sticks by her as they wander the city, having tiny adventures and flashing back to the day that changed his life and forward to the abortion she hopes will keep hers from changing. Eventually, Jose introduces her to his family, which occasions a series of revelatory speeches about the ties that unite them and the history that drives them.

Some of “Bella”’s little stories are touching, some are whimsical and some are just random, but there are too many unproductive side plots, and too many of them wallow in exaggerated anguish and labored dialogue, which Blanchard in particular struggles to bring off naturally. And the wide tonal range keeps the vignettes from cohering: The film ranges between weepy Mexican telenovela and a playful, grown-up version of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” As Monteverde’s first feature film, it suggests a series of bold but awkward stylistic experiments, some of which work well enough to suggest a real talent in the making. But it might have been better to set aside a few ideas for the next film.