My favorite, Maribel

Tortilla Soup was a cute and funny movie to watch. The storyline is about a Mexican-born father living with three grown Mexican-American daughters named Latitia, Carmen, and Maribel. The father, Martin, is an experience cook who enjoy making lavish, gourmet meals for his family in a traditional table setting. Throughout the movie, we see the strong relationship between the family as well as many unexpected changes enter the family’s life.

Out of all the characters in this film, my personal favorite was Maribel Naranja. Aside from her sisters, Maribel was still in high school, deciding what to do with her life. She had seemed very sure of herself at the beginning of the movie, however that seemed to change after she met her boyfriend Andy. She met Andy accidentally, originally speaking to him to tell him he was being stood up by their friend. Their original conversation led to more interesting talk, and finally led Maribel to accept Andy’s invitation for coffee. Without much regard to her family, Maribel ran extremely late for her father’s dinner that night. The writers portrayed Maribel this way in order to give off a irresponsible teenager type of vibe that would probably make the viewer laugh, or sigh.

Maribel seems to have a problem with communication with her family. While she tries to break up an argument between her sisters Carmen and Latitia, they can barely hear her raise her voice asking them to stop. This frustrates Maribel, and she ends up slamming plates into the floor from her seat on the counter. A second time, she could barely communicate with her whole family while they were sitting at dinner together, plus Andy. It was the first time the family met Andy, and it seemed to go well at the beginning. Naturally, Maribel chose to make her important announcement at dinner, like the whole family had done previously. Everyone was immersed in conversation already, and did not hear her voice, until she raised it completely, calling out her choice to put off college. This stunning decision upset her father, causing Maribel to throw herself into a living situation with Andy. Her issues with communication and “doing what she wants” make her seem juvenile still, even being a fully grown beautiful young woman.

My choice for this entry was Maribel, because I believe that every young woman can relate to her in a sense. In a way, each young lady has felt that communication was a problem, that we could never do what we wanted, or we were just lost and wanted to “find ourselves’’. Maribel was a fun character, that really touched me for the simple fact that she was a fantastically portrayed, slightly lost teenager.