'The Blue Diner' Offers A Refreshing Cinematic Feast

The drama The Blue Diner is a beautifully made indie movie that combines English and Spanish dialogue.

The story centers on a young woman of Puerto Rican heritage named Elena, capably played by Lisa Vidal. After some kind of head trauma, the bilingual Elena loses the ability to speak Spanish. When her immigrant mother and neighbors speak in her native language, she just stares at them, befuddled.

But a twist to the story is that whenever Elena experiences passionate emotions - fear, anger, love - her Spanish returns. 

The Blue Diner shows a close-knit yet complex relationship between Elena and her mother, played by talented veteran actress Miriam Colon. There is also an intriguing love triangle between Elena, her white American boss (Jack Mulcahy) at the funeral home where she works and a Latino bohemian artist (José Yenque) whose painting mysteriously appears in a museum where her mother works right around the time when Elena loses her Spanish.
 

Watch The Blue Diner trailer at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdd0HBvAr8o

 

Written, produced and directed by Natatcha Estébanez and Jan Egleson, The Blue Diner was released in 2001 and aired on HBO. The movie is refreshing in that it portrays a story with Latino characters that involves no violence, drugs or other stereotypes.

The performances are naturalistic and engaging. And the story is set in Boston, which is an interesting departure from the usual urban settings of New York or Los Angeles.

 

The only complaint I have is that the subtitles on the DVD are inconsistent. I'm trying to learn Spanish, so I wanted either English subtitles so that I could learn the meaning of the Spanish dialogue, or Spanish subtitles so that I could see visually what Spanish words were being spoken. But Spanish subtitles appeared in some scenes and not in others, for some odd reason.

 

Other than that, I would highly recommend checking out The Blue Diner. Not only should there be more movies made like this that present realistic, three-dimensional characters, movies like The Blue Diner should also reach a wider audience.

AN INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: According to Wikipedia, The Blue Diner got made because filmmaker Jan Egleson was able to acquire excess film stock from the '97 blockbuster Titanic.

A lot of small, character-driven indie flicks get made in this by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of way. To use a well-worn cliché, where there's a will, there's a way...