There is something really powerful about director Antonio Mendez Esparza's latest piece "Life and Nothing More". The film really stands alone as an authentic story of life's hardships told through a single mother's journey of raising her oldest teenage son and youngest daughter while having to work a waitress job at a local diner. Each scene emerges as a new and different day, and this juxtaposition is incredibly effective when observing a family where truly each new day you have something to prove. Throughout the film we observe the mother (Regina) looking to pass along crucial advice to teenage son (Andrew) to help and avoid him falling into the same path as his father who is carrying out a lengthy prison sentence. The absence of the father is a reminder to many Americans that to many in the U.S. population this is a true testament of life and family, where a young boy becoming a man struggles naturally without a father character present. Esparza again is showing audience members that we are all inherently different, but through this incredibly potent storytelling there is a universal truth of doing the best you can with what you have right in front of you.
Review of Life and Nothing More
