THE STORY – Rico’s summer is a wild mix of chasing girls and hustling homemade cocktails out of a cooler on Orchard Beach, the Bronx. But when Destiny, his teenage girlfriend, crashes at his place with his family, it’s only a matter of time before his rowdy, carefree days come spiraling down.
THE CAST – Juan Collado, Destiny Checo, Yohanna Florentino & Nathaly Navarro
THE TEAM – Joel Alfonso Vargas (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 99 Minutes
Before a single image appears on screen, Joel Alfonso Vargas’ feature debut opens with an ambiguous title card. In a small font, the text reads: “the working man is a sucker.” For the remainder of Vargas’ neo-realist coming-of-age tale, the camera’s periphery lures onto Rico, a young nineteen-year-old with dreams and minimal ambition. Portrayed by newcomer Juan Collado, Rico spends the majority of his days hustling the Bronx beaches during the scorching summer days. Wearing nothing more than a tank top, a black snapback, a colorful pair of shorts, and rugged sandals, Rico carries his cooler around the sandy shores with entrepreneurial ease. He sells illegally brewed cocktails for a living – bottled drinks mixed in his family’s kitchen with nothing more than a couple of gallons of crush, water, and booze. In a way, the title card perfectly resembles Rico’s mythos, right before his character is suddenly faced with the challenges of early adulthood.
In “Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo),” Vargas intimately follows Rico’s hedonistic routines. The film largely consists of static master shots that capture Rico’s pandemonium in his tight-knit family unit. In a predictable fashion, his world is turned upside down with a sudden teen pregnancy. Collado’s impressive performance captures the naiveté of teenagehood as the prospects of parenthood begin to alter his work ethic. The lead performance at play expertly enunciates Rico’s irritability. Despite dominating the film’s runtime, Collado’s character is a troublesome and unlikable recluse.
As the film progresses, Rico’s family adapts to the presence of his underage partner, Destiny. While Vargas includes the brief mention of a problematic age gap, the film’s emotional gravitas dwindles from the lack of impunity against the film’s insufferable lead. In terms of character writing, Vargas’ insistence towards cinéma vérité conventions oddly distances the viewer from Rico’s periphery. In perfect detail, we see his struggles and growing alcoholism from a distance. However, the repetitiveness of his mal-mannered actions merely reiterates his foolish decisions to the viewer, with little deviation from its loose formula.
Even as a protagonist, Rico’s humorous optimism wears thin. While there’s some attempt at tackling Rico’s political values during a heated argument involving vaccination policies, Vargas keeps his character’s values sheltered for the majority of the runtime. Whereas the cinéma vérité methodology works on an ethnographic plane in capturing the daily hustle and bustle of the Bronx, the film’s conventional narrative ultimately suffers from a flurry of tropes, cliches, and familiar beats. The flimsy narrative is derivative of stronger coming-of-age tales about early parenthood.
Destiny, who shares the same first name with her performer Destiny Checo, is by far the most interesting character in the film. While Vargas continuously spotlights Rico’s mishaps, Destiny’s quietude speaks volumes. Rico’s mother and sister play an integral role in Destiny’s arc as she escapes from her home to live with Rico in his claustrophobic bedroom. Destiny’s indecisiveness and insecurity exemplify Rico’s lack of self-awareness. As the young lovers begin to spiral with the economic pressures of adulthood, Destiny begins to break through the illusion of her lover’s manipulative tactics. While there’s certainly love between the pair, Vargas illuminates the ideological imbalance in the relationship, capturing Rico’s hungover inattentiveness against Destiny’s well-intentioned naiveté.
Whereas the impressive coordination of its static master shots effectively demonstrates Vargas’ skill as a filmmaker, the thematic content at the crux of his film is sorely lacking. The decently produced images are insufficient, especially when the character’s shrouded moral compass lacks interrogative bite. What we see is quite literally what we get with “Mad Bills to Pay.” As a directorial exercise, Vargas admirably extends his short film “May It Go Beautifully for You, Rico” into feature form, prolonging the narrative with a proper three-act progression. Regrettably, while the impressive directorial diligence of Vargas and his photography team shouldn’t go unnoticed, the complementary narrative, unfortunately, prioritizes conventionality over compelling storytelling.
