Written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, 2006 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award winner Quinceañera is a little curio that starts out as what seems like a bit of a cultural jerk-off, an awkward mash-up of teen melodrama and Larry Clark’s predilections for minority youth culture and shirtless young boys. It quickly blossoms, though, into something better, richer and deeper — a movie marked by a rarely glimpsed authenticity with respect to its specificity of setting, fully-dimensional young characters and ethnic particularization.

Set in Los Angeles’ Echo Park area, where actors who can’t afford the Hollywood Hills’ rents and other arty types live alongside a cross-section of blue-collar Latino families, Quinceañera centers on Magdalena (Emily Rios), a storefront preacher’s daughter who is just a few months away from her 15th birthday, a cultural touchstone. She frets about her parents being unable to afford the comparative extravagances of her cousin’s party, but soon another problem rears it head. Magdalena is pregnant, though she swears to her mother — and we’re inclined to believe her — that she and her boyfriend, Ernesto (Jesus Castanos), haven’t had sex. Eventually, though, Magdalena is bounced out of her home by her angry, disgraced father.

Champion “black sheep” status, however, won’t come easily for Magdalena, as her hotheaded cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia) wears that crown in the family. Carlos lives with his great-great-uncle, Tomas (Chalo Gonzalez), a weathered but unbowed old man who makes his living selling champurrado on the street from a little pushcart. In a development that takes a bit of getting used to because, you realize, it feels so intimately ripped from real life, Carlos falls into a relationship with a nearby affluent, white gay couple — comprised of Londoner Gary (David Ross) and the slightly older and less sensitive James (Jason Wood) — who are pioneers of gentrification in the neighborhood. Is Carlos gay? Feeling the first pangs of such a realization? Submitting to so-called “gay-for-pay”? Answers are a bit slow developing, but pleasingly so — never rushed or artificial.

As Magdalena’s pregnancy grows more visible, she and Carlos find refuge with Tomas, and pull together as a sort of separate family within a family. But with the economics of the neighborhood turning against them and James’ jealousy spurring a vindictive eviction, a crisis blooms. Glatzer (America’s Next Top Model) and Westmoreland (Gay Republicans) are a somewhat unlikely pair, but they elicit from Rios and Garcia two fantastic, beautifully rooted performances, and Gonzalez also exudes a suitably well-worn charisma. Poetically real, Quinceañera is alternately rich, heartbreaking and full of the sort of dramatic tension — the peaks and valleys — one finds in real life.

Presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer that preserves the aspect ratio of its theatrical presentation, the film comes to DVD with two separate audio commentary tracks. The first, with co-directors Glatzer and Westmoreland, is full of praise for their actors and plenty of anecdotal detail about the raising of stakes and capital leading up to production. The second track, meanwhile, includes Rios, Gonzalez and Garcia, and is a warm and fascinating affair — full of pleasant recollections but also plenty of discerning opinion and detail about the movie’s collision of cultures and mores. Other special features include a brief behind-the-scenes featurette, footage from the red carpet festival presentation of the film and a post-screening Q&A with cast and crew. All in all, this is a fantastic little movie, disarming in its humble but remarkable insights; this DVD presentation befits it nicely. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)