I’ve done a lot of the standard tourist stuff around New York City. While I had a blast doing that, maybe my most treasured trip was visiting friends in Inwood, at the tippy top of Manhattan. That Dominican/Mexican neighborhood should get more credit than it does for making New York such a cultural hub attracting people from all over the planet, electric with community and joy. So when I say Mad Bills to Pay at its best brought me back to those memories, that’s the highest compliment I can pay a film.
Jose Alfonso Vargas’s film takes us to the New York we don’t see in film often: The Bronx, but the only Yankees mentions are in the caps. We’re in Morris Heights where the Dominican immigrants have called home. We see how 19 year olds like Rico (Juan Collado) try to pay their mad bills…selling coolies (nutcrackers) on Orchard Beach. Using the little money made to party with friends, then sleep in till noon in hard working mom Andrea’s (Yohanna Florentino) house, getting woken up by mom or pissed off sister Sally (Nathaly Navarro), and doing it all over again. Condoms get forgotten at those parties in drunken passion, and Rico gets his girlfriend Destiny (Destiny Checho) pregnant. On the precipice of becoming a father, Rico tries to step up and move Destiny into his bedroom to be a good, 19 year old, dad.
I wish the whole movie was more like the incredible opening 20 minutes. Vargas’s film walks through a day in Rico’s life. Within 5 minutes we’re immersed in the hustle and flow of his day, slinging Pikachus and Icy Blue coolies 1 for $10, 2 for $15. Little breaks here and there to give a nutcracker to a pal, and have a little fun before back to selling. When it gets dark he brings the leftovers to someone’s house throwing a party, enjoying a beer after a “successful” day, dancing and oogling the hunnies. A wrinkle gets thrown in when Rico spots Sally at one of his parties in a way too revealing dress for a 16 year old, dragging her home just in time for Andrea to come home from her shift. What follows then is a movie highlight, as the family hurls the most cutting insults that are loving but completely cruel at the same time, maybe the most realistic fight I’ve seen, with some truly great comebacks like “Not gonna lie ma, I think your little girl might be a thot” or “You know what Rico be doing when you working? Getting high…in YOUR house!”. Then it’s time for bed, to wake up and do the same thing again. If Joel Alfonso Vargas had just done 3 more days like that, I would have had a blast of a time with his film, eagerly waiting for Nathaly Navarro to show up again, the real comet of this movie.
As for the plot of the movie, after the very icky introduction of Destiny and Rico’s, um, age difference we begin the very incisive focus on their relationship with one another. As you might expect, watching a high schooler and a 19 year old try to figure out how to be responsible like parents in 9 months is basically impossible. You can’t help but feel bad for both of them. Destiny slowly watches the charm spells Rico puts on her fade away, dawning on how alone and abandoned she feels by her family and how life altering her decision is dawning on her; her meekness at the beginning slowly forges her into rapid adulthood, asking all the right questions of her baby daddy and eventually herself. Rico is caught in the struggle many young men find themselves in, enamored with the idea of being a father and growing up while completely lacking the skills to do so. What results is progress in fits and starts from him. He does some really mature things like getting real jobs and such, only to be unable to handle the tedium of waking up at the exact same time over and over again, understanding the real consequences of fatherhood. Vargas directs the movie honestly: we want to grab these two and shake some sense into them before it’s too late. But even in that desperation there’s still time for little joys: watching Andrea and Sally interrogate Rico at Destiny’s first dinner there is uncomfortably hilarious, as is a conversation between the family about vaccinating the baby. And even little moments of romance, like a cute picnic on Orchard Beach where Destiny tells Rico she’s proud of his progress or Rico’s impromptu proposal under a tree on the beach.
Seeing little worlds like this I know nothing about is why I love going to the movies. Mad Bills to Pay should be mandatory viewing for anyone in a small town in the middle of nowhere that wants to be a director. You don’t need a big city to tell your story; you just need a story to tell, so tell the one you know. Whether it’s about coolie sales on a Bronx beach, a Snack Shack in the summer, Scottish field trips, or the Last Picture Show in your town, you might be surprised at what you find!