Like a thousand other coming-of-age-in-an-ethnic-family dramas, “Falling Awake” puts good intentions and appealing performances into the balance against clichés of dead-end neighborhoods and rebellious (but sensitive) youth.
Jay (Andrew Cisneros) spends his days playing guitar for tips in City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan and his nights pumping gas closer to home, in the Bronx. His father is a doorman; his sister lives at home with her two children; and his brother is in Iraq, but you could have guessed all that.
As Jay works on his songs and dreams of escape, a fight at a house party inexorably leads to a moment of greater violence, because that’s what happens in this type of movie, along with shouts of “You don’t know anything about me” and a lot of bellowing by the angry father (Nestor Serrano). Between scenes handed down from “Boyz n the Hood” and “West Side Story,” the film’s moment-to-moment depiction of life on the stoops of Soundview in the South Bronx feels authentic, and Mr. Cisneros has an easy rapport with Flaco Navaja and Michael Rivera, who play Jay’s best friends. Read more..
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