Luminarias

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Luminarias ★★ 1999 (R)

Romantic comedy about four Hispanic friends looking for love in East L.A. and meeting to console each other at the Luminarias restaurant. Lawyer Andrea (Fernandez), who's divorcing her philandering husband (Beltran), finds herself attracted to anglo Joseph (Bakula). Therapist Sofia (DuBois) has always tried to distance herself from her roots but gets is surprised by her feelings for cute Mexican waiter Pablo (Lopez). Artist Lilly (Moya) is hoping to change her luck in love with Korean Lu (Lim) only to run into prejudice from his parents and sexy designer Irene (Ortelli) has sworn off sex for Lent and is trying to accept her crossdressing gay brother (Rivas). The friendships are believable even if there's too much going on with the plot. 101m/C VHS, DVD . Evelina Fernandez, Marta DuBois, Dyana Ortelli, Angela Moya, Scott Bakula, Robert Beltran, Sal Lopez, Andrew C. Lim, Geoffrey Rivas, Richard “Cheech” Marin; D: Jose Luis Valenzuela; W: Evelina Fernandez; C: Alex Phillips Jr.; M: Eric Allaman.