In Joel Alfonso Varga’s directorial debut Mad Bills To Pay, (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo), protagonist Rico (Juan Collado) is equal parts charming and stubborn
Like most nineteen year olds, he’s optimistically convinced that things will simply work out for him. But adulthood is creeping towards Rico in the form of Destiny (Destiny Checho), his rather poetically named teenage girlfriend, and her unexpected pregnancy.
Mad Bills to Pay is a technically simple story, a modern dose of social realism following Rico as he straddles the line between adolescence and adulthood, still having to explain himself to his mother, still tattling on his sister, still living at home, but soon responsible for a family of three.
Mad Bills To Pay is matter-of-fact about present-day working class life, particularly as a non-white person living in heavily policed New York City, without disparaging any of its characters. Rico’s family often fights directly or indirectly about the ways in which their precarious finances affect their personal life: lobbing around accusations of working too much or too little, swiping money from each other, drinking and staying out to avoid when life becomes too heavy. Varga allows the fights to play out again and again, often for a longer span than would appear economical. The same tattling between siblings or bickering between partners tumble forth repeatedly in a single scene. The effect is one of realism, an understanding that this is how things go in this household. But these repeated arguments (and their eventual fading) also allow for the practical care the family provides for each other to hold more distinct weight. Love is evident in Rico’s mother feeding and homing Destiny, in Rico taking a crappy job at a coastal fish restaurant to prove to his family and Destiny that he’s stepping up. The bickering will be let go. The love will always remain.
The women in Rico’s life often speak to him in groups, a Greek chorus of sanity pushing back against his more absurd conceptions—ideas like not getting his child vaccinated or making enough money for a family of three solely by selling unlicensed alcohol on the beach. Destiny, Rico’s mother, Andrea (Yohanna Florentino), and Rico’s sister, Sally (Nathaly Navarro), are played with skill by their respective performers — where Rico hears only their raised voices as signs of nagging or tattling, most of what they speak is, in reality, desperate pleas for him to internalize the weight of the upcoming shift in his life.
But Rico is mostly idealistic and flighty, dodging any whiff of pragmatism from the women in his life, and failing to see the gravity of his incoming fatherhood. He repeatedly insists that he and Destiny have eight long months to work it all out. In that time he envisions that he’ll have a car and a home for Destiny and their baby (who he hopes to name Riley, as in from The Boondocks, or Tetsuo).
Despite Rico’s unwarranted confidence and frequent stumbles, one doesn’t feel smug, but instead quite sad, during the flashpoint moments in the film where Rico is obligated to grow up or learn his lessons. This is helped in part by Varga emphasizing the many ways Rico “learns lessons” that are unnecessary and due in large part to his lack of resources and his racialized identity, but much of this patience with Rico also comes from Collado’s deft performance. Collado imbues a quiet vulnerability that never fully comes to the surface—Rico’s internal wounds and moments of distress are all informed through a quickness of breath or a stony face. Rico’s repeated, cyclical song-and-dance about how he’s going to care for Destiny and his baby, that it’ll all work out, is offered with such pleasant earnestness that it seems he’s convinced himself more than he has any of his family.
Rico’s life is one of cycles: fighting and making up with Destiny, finding and losing a job, paying off some of his legal fines and then getting fined again. This is both a tragedy and a comfort. Mad Bills To Pay’s final moments are sober, but there have been enough rhythmic cycles shown throughout the film that it doesn’t necessarily feel pessimistic. It’ll heal up again. And then it will fall apart. And then it will heal up again. The bills are due each and every month. We live with these rhythms, for better or worse.
