Mad Bills to Pay feels like watching a home movie, which is part of why it’s so relatable. In Joel Alfonso Vargas’s directorial debut, we get an intimate look at our main character, Rico (Juan Collado) and his family, Dominican Americans living under financially precarious circumstances in the Bronx. When Rico tells his mother (Yohanna Florentino) and sister (Nathaly Navarro) that his girlfriend (Destiny Checho) is pregnant, he gets a crash course on love, money, and the relationship between the two. We get a front-row seat. Vargas takes us through slow, unhurried scenes to explore Rico’s journey. The film’s raw, unpolished style offers a moving commentary on how money affects our intimate relationships, and our view of ourselves.
Although this is Joel Alfonso Vargas’ feature film debut, he has made several short films, honing a specific style of documentary-style realism, largely focused on the Dominican diaspora and life in the Bronx. With Mad Bills to Pay, Vargas gives us 90 minutes of movie, using the storytelling techniques and themes he’s practiced in his short films (including May It Go Beaufifully for You, Rico, a 30-minute short featuring the same characters as Mad Bills to Pay). Vargas’s debut is notable because it contains an understated confidence. He isn’t afraid to take his time. There are long shots with little dialogue, where the audience can soak up the setting, observing the details. It feels like we’re watching the story unfold organically, rather than being strategically fed something calculated. The atmosphere builds and allows us to realize the importance of the setting and its pull on the characters.
Actor Juan Collado brings the main character, Rico, to life. Collado embodies Rico’s fears, frustrations, and hopes. He shows us who Rico is through small gestures, like his body language and verbal ticks. It doesn’t feel like he’s acting. It feels like he is Rico. Rico is just a boy, trying to figure out how to be a man. Collado embodies Rico’s pride, fear, desperation, and love. We see him try, fail, and succeed at different times. His ups and downs carry the emotional weight of the story.
This emotional honesty of Rico’s character doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of Vargas’s documentary-like filming style. We observe Rico’s daily life, and that of his mother, sister, and girlfriend. The camera lingers in different settings—the street, Rico’s bedroom, the beach—to give us a sense of the place. We watch a long scene of Rico and his girlfriend assembling a pack-n-play together. We see them shopping for cereal together, where Rico frequently calls her “bro”. Through these scenes, we see the relational dynamics at play. We also see the tension building as the birth of Rico and Destiny’s baby gets closer. The slow pacing allows us to have an intimate and honest look at the film’s characters and the challenges they’re facing.
And the biggest challenge Rico takes on is how to show his love without any money. He starts off self-employed selling homemade cocktails on the beach, a good gig for a single teenager. But when he needs to start taking financial care of his girlfriend and unborn child, his efforts fall short. It seems that love is not enough. The movie hints at this connection between love and money earlier on when Rico and his sister give their mom a lottery ticket for her birthday. At that moment, the love she feels from her children overwhelms her. Money is proof of love. They’re intrinsically linked. Rico can’t prove his love because he doesn’t have money. This forces him to doubt his sense of dignity.
We don’t just see this with Rico. His mother and sister also live with this dynamic. Money shapes their lives and relationships. Rico’s mother works all the time and is rarely home with her children. There’s another scene where Rico’s sister, Sally, goes into his room and steals money that he’s earned. Both feel the financial strain of Rico’s new girlfriend moving in, and the financial challenges a new baby will place on all of them. None of these characters is portrayed as particularly immoral through these decisions. Instead, they’re all doing their best to navigate difficult circumstances and the problem of financial scarcity.
The last scene of Mad Bills to Pay is especially chilling, because after all Rico has been through to prove that he’s serious about this next phase of life, we know his battles are just beginning. The final scene shows Rico and Desitny at their child’s gender reveal party, looking at each other with a sense of unease that reminded me of the end of The Graduate. The question “What have we done?” hangs in the air. In the audience, we have a visceral reaction, because we know the weight of that question for these characters’ lives. We know that they’ll be struggling with the interplay of love, money, and dignity for years to come.
Joel Alfonso Vargas’s directorial debut strikes an emotional tone, raises thought-provoking questions about relationships, and is definitely worth a watch.
Mad Bills to Pay opens this weekend at Siskel Film Center.
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