Magdalena (Emily Rios) is the typical ninth-grader: a bundle of tender emotions, rampant hormones and exploratory impulses who's balancing old-fashioned elements of her parents' Mexican culture with the influences of Echo Park. She and Herman (J.R. Cruz) go just a shade too far, and she approaches her quinceañera celebration with a protruding stomach and a troubled conscience.

Her father, a security guard and part-time pastor, expels her from the house. So Magdalena creates a new family with great-great-uncle Tomas (Chalo González) and cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia), a gay gang member whose parents cut him off. They come to care for each other literally and figuratively, but the union seems too fragile to endure.

The writer-director team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland give us an Echo Park where a more settled Latino culture deals with gay interlopers in an uneasy way. Gary (David Ross) and James (Jason Wood) are gay yuppies who buy the property where Tomas has lived for decades in a small house. It's an investment to them; though they're not especially cold-hearted, they have no sense of the effect their decisions have on Tomas and his kin. They also treat compliant Carlos as a sex toy, which becomes a problem when he gets attached to Gary.

The filmmakers have sympathy for everyone, from the indignant father to the evasive Herman, who slides away from responsibility like an eel avoiding a fisherman's spear. Perhaps because they're outsiders, the writers aren't comfortable criticizing the excesses of the quinceañera party; there's a suggestion that happiness doesn't amount to much, unless you arrive in a Hummer limo.

Glatzer and Westmoreland also smooth over rough edges with a plot device that conveniently solves three people's problems. And I wanted to know more about Carlos' connections: Was he a member of a gang of gay men, or a gay man tolerated by mainstream gang culture?

Yet we root for the participants so wholeheartedly that the movie never loses its way. Newcomer Rios is endearingly natural; the more experienced Garcia embodies the conflicts of a man whose choices have isolated him from people he cares about.

González, who made his debut in "The Wild Bunch" in 1969 -- and was no spring chicken then -- floats along effortlessly, exuding charm and warmth. He has an eternal youthfulness that reminds us we ought to keep a touch of childlike innocence and curiosity all our days on Earth.

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