Raising Victor Vargas is equal parts George Washington, Our Song and Kids, so if you're a fan of American independent films with no-name, inexperienced, yet completely convincing adolescent acting talent, do yourself a favor and check it out pronto.  Like those three pictures, Vargas features a large cast of young people and it doesn't place them in unbelievable situations or make them spout irritating Dawson-speak.  Instead, its story plays like a slice of real life.

The eponymous Victor Vargas is an overconfident 17-year-old (Victor Rasuk) who shares a two-bedroom, third-floor walkup in a Dominican enclave of Manhattan's Lower East Side with a younger brother (his real-life sibling Silvestre Rasuk), a younger sister (Krystal Rodriguez) and the hardcore Catholic grandmother (Altagracia Guzman) who has been stuck raising them all by herself.  As the film opens, Victor has just about talked himself into the bed of an upstairs neighbor impolitely referred to as Fat Donna (Donna Maldonado) but is busted by his best friend Harold (Kevin Rivera) and his nosy sister Vicki before he can complete the act.

Knowing Vicki's gossipy ways, Victor realizes it's only a matter of time before everybody in the neighborhood will start dogging him for trying to get with Fat Donna.  So he heads to the local pool with Harold and tries to talk up the prettiest girl he can find, in hopes everyone will forget about the Fat Donna incident.  He sets his sights on Judy (Judy Marte) because she's "juicy," but she wants nothing to do with him, or any other testosterone-driven male in the area.

Victor eventually gets another crack at Judy, but only after promising to fix up her little brother Carlos (Wilfree Vasquez) with Vicki.  Judy eventually succumbs to Victor's advances and agrees to let him be her man, but not because she likes him.  As she explains to her friend Melonie (Melonie Diaz), who is being hotly pursued by Harold, Victor will be like bug spray, keeping every other horny, abrasive guy in the neighborhood away from her.

Meanwhile, Victor has constant run-ins with his grandmother, who sees him as a devilish influence on his brother and sister because they start doing innocent things typical of kids their age.  Grandma doesn't quite see things that way, though.  Considering some of the things her flock could be involved with (drugs, gangs, etc.), ol' Grandma should consider herself lucky and relax with the Catholic dogma already, although the scene where she slaps a lock on the telephone is a pretty funny last-ditch effort to keep evil out of her house (it's almost like a chastity belt).

Vargas is written and directed by Peter Sollett, who made a name for himself with the 29-minute short Five Feet High and Rising, which featured some of the same characters and actors as Vargas and won awards at Cannes, Sundance and SXSW.  Armed with gifted cinematographer Tim Orr, who also shot David Gordon Green's George Washington and All the Real Girls, Sollett gives viewers that fly-on-the-wall feel ordinarily reserved for documentaries. Vargas never once feels false or hits a sour note, and its actors don't seem at all like they're acting.  The R rating is a little baffling, considering the complete lack of sex, but Vargas does offer one of the best screen kisses you're likely to see this year.

I've read some reviews of Vargas that suggest this little film would have been ignored had it focused on white teenagers in Middle America, but a picture like that would likely deserve the cold shoulder.  If it was about a white teenager trying to get laid, you can bet the story would have been as predictable as the characters would have been two-dimensional.  And somebody probably would have stuck their dick in a pie, too.  Vargas is refreshingly stereotype-free, aside possibly from Judy's ugly duckling best friend (with ducks on her panties, no less) who turns out to be a knockout when she lets down her hair and takes off her glasses.

1:28 -

for strong language