Paradise Chez Perez

directed by Mira Nair

starring Marisa Tomei, Alfred

Molina and Anjelica Huston

Samuel Goldwyn Pictures

Directed by Mira Nair '79, maker of "Mississippi Masala," "The Perez Family" is the best movie to come along this year. A luminous, carnal comedy about love, exile and the immigrant experience among Miami's Cubans, Nair's film is delightful as the blossoming spring.

The movie begins in 1980, during the so-called Mariel Boatlift, when Fidel Castro emptied his prisons of political prisoners, criminals, homosexuals and other undesirables and allowed them to go to Florida. Juan Raul Perez (Alfred Molina), a political prisoner, hasn't seen his wife Carmela in 20 years, ever since he sent her and their infant daughter to Miami. Memories of Carmela and his daughter kept him alive during his imprisonment, and he desperately looks forward to the reunion. Dorita Perez (Marisa Tomei), a young sugarcane worker, is obsessed with American popular culture, especially John Wayne and Elvis Presley, and has always dreamt of living in the United States.

Dorita and Juan meet on the boat to Miami, and are interned at the same military base while waiting for people who will sponsor their entry into the United States. Since preference is given to families, Dorita and Juan pretend to be married, and pick up a grandfather and a young man whose last name is also Perez. (The film's running joke is that Perez is the most common surname in Spanish, like Smith in English, and that this felicitous commonality is what gives the characters their freedom.) In Miami, meanwhile, Juan's wife Carmela (Anjelica Huston) believes that Juan is never going to arrive and, despite the objections of her brother Angel (Diego Walraff), finds herself attracted to a policeman named John Pirelli (Chazz Palminteri).

It would be unpardonable to reveal what happens, for "The Perez Family" has a nicely constructed and entertaining plot, but the movie's primary pleasures come from the actors and from the incidentals with which director Mira Nair has filled the story. The production design, the cinematography, the costumes and the music are all top-notch--the picture fairly bursts at the seams with wit, radiance and sensuality.

Molina, Palminteri and Walraff are all fine (Walraff gives an especially marvelous performance), but this movie belongs to the women. Anjelica Huston delivers a dream of a performance. Her acting seems effortless, and Huston is profoundly sexy in the manner of women who have had a bit of life experience (Vanessa Redgrave also springs to mind). She is also intensely witty; her whole body has become a witty instrument, and she can get more out of a raised eyebrow than out of a page of dialogue.

Marisa Tomei is impressive, almost a revelation. This is by far the best performance she has given on film. She mixes the earthiness of her Mona Lisa Vito in "My Cousin Vinny" with the delicacy and luminosity of her Faith in "Only You," and comes up with something altogether different and superior. Tomei gained 20 pounds for the role and has never looked better--voluptuous, sensual, kinetic and delicately beautiful. In addition, her accent is impeccable. She is at times almost steretypically overripe, and yet she creates a genuineness which saves the whole conceit. Every time she is onscreen, she is magnetic; you are drawn to her because you do not know what she is going to do, and she fills the movie with a joyful noise.

Mira Nair's direction is superb. She has an exacting eye for detail, and an unerring instinct for what makes a film work. She exhibits an extraordinary control over the elements in the film, producing a work that is about exile, lost love, political repression, bygone dreams, and also about blossoming love, pleasure, warmth, and newfound hope.

Except for a few false notes in the beginning, "The Perez Family" is a superlative work, profoundly funny, erotic and insightful, with a trace of melancholy that wafts through the film like Juan's Proustian memories of a day at the beach in pre-Castro Cuba. I can't remember the last time a movie gave me this much pleasure. "The Perez Family" is a rapturous dream of a film.