The Dominican Within the Bronx

Juan Collado in Mad Bills to Pay. Courtesy of Cinetic Media.

There’s not enough love for the Bronx. Pigeonholed as the birthplace of hip-hop and the home of the New York Yankees, these cultural markers serve as placeholders for meaningful discussions about the distinct character of the Boogie Down. More so than any borough, the steadfast exceptionalism that Bronxites vocalize about their piece of turf pushes back against mainstream media’s ongoing neglect of the Bronx. A cursory glance at recent work set in New York City shows thus: the unlimited depictions of Manhattan; a proliferation of attention toward niche communities in both Brooklyn and Queens; even Staten Island has regained some cultural capital. 

The narrative from Bronxites (creatives or otherwise) tends to go: “I am proud to have been born and raised in the Bronx, despite its undesirable qualities.” The keyword is despite, as it illuminates the self-deprecation within stories set in the Bronx, perpetuating the idea that the borough is a place to escape—despite the reality that roughly 1.3 million people live there and have carved out their slice of heaven. Popular imagination of the Bronx characterizes it as an inhospitable hellscape only vindicated by its residents’ humility. 

Juan Collado in Mad Bills to Pay. Courtesy of Cinetic Media.

Destiny Checo and Juan Collado in Mad Bills to Pay. Courtesy of Cinetic Media.

So imagine the joy I felt when I sat down for a screening of Joel Alfonso Vargas’s Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo), his debut feature, unabashedly set in the Bronx without any compulsion to justify its setting. Caveated with the film being so authentically New York Dominican, it's a remarkable addendum to Dominican-American cinema.

The film stars Rico (Juan Collado), a 19-year-old making money for the summer by selling nutcrackers at Orchard Beach. His nights of partying are reoriented when he learns his 16-year-old girlfriend, Destiny (Destiny Checo), is pregnant, and he brings her to live with his family. Through a mix of dismay and ridicule, his mother (Yohanna Florentino) and younger sister Sally (Nathaly Navarro) don’t believe he is ready to be a father.

An unbelabored premise with many real-world examples, there’s no plot twist here. Yet, that is what makes the film so compelling. Vargas and company articulate such a vivid lived experience, excluding the rigmarole of contextualizing Rico’s situation or the social politics of selling bootleg cocktails. This esoteric sensibility is refreshing for those who are from the Bronx and recognize the film’s locations, doubly so for those who can recognize the Bronx-Dominican mannerisms at play. Important moments include: the huge Dominican flag adorned above Rico’s bed, the essential dinnertime ensalada verde, and the assumed patriarchal values Rico inherits from his absent father.

Courtesy of Cinetic Media.

Absent fathers are ubiquitous across any range of communities, and often this unavailable parent creates a prideful duty in children (usually for sons) to be better for their children. Rico verbalizes this desirewhen Destiny asks how he plans to provide for the family: ”I gotta be a good parent. I ain’t never had my father, so I ain’t gonna continue that . . .  You know it be the little things in life, just eating pizza with your kid. That means something, ya know. No funny shit.” His ambitions for parenting seem to know no bounds as in the same scene he says he’ll, “be 40, retired, with [his] kids doing they own shit, ya know.” 

A naive dream at best, however, it is not all bleak. Mad Bills to Bill is not a film to warn about the consequences of teenage pregnancy or the dynamics of a single-parent matriarchy, though it could have been. It’s appropriate to call it a slice of life film that feels in line with the work of Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep) and Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop). Every shot lingers on its characters with a methodical pace, so scenes aren’t simply conveying info to move the plot along. Rather, there is room to breathe in the location-shot Bronx apartments, a noteworthy accomplishment considering the filmmakers sourced the location from a generous fumigator.

Vargas intentionally sought actors who knew how to play down their acting and could collaborate to make the script their own. The actors Collado, Florentino, and Navarro all came to the project with training and theater experience, except for Checo, whom Vargas had noticed on Backstage via TikTok. After watching her videos, Vargas said, “I was like, this is good. She has a pretty big personality. She’s so emotive in her expressions.” Indeed, her reserved nature gives away her inexperience on screen, but she gradually opens up with the rest of the cast in a satisfying way.

Juan Collado, Yohanna Florentino, and Nathaly Navarro in Mad Bills to Pay. Courtesy of Cinetic Media.

There is an eccentric magnetism watching Collado play Rico. He oozes a familiar bravado that is so common in Dominicans; his loud, passionate charm is confident. Likewise, for Florentino and Navarro, their presence is impossible to ignore because of their unwavering disposition to celebrate family, regardless of the circumstance. This is apparent when Sally and Ricos’smother reprimand them for lying to go to a party and smoking weed in the house, respectively. But in the very next scene, Sally and Rico give a candle-lit cake with a scratchcard for her fortieth birthday. No matter how much this family stresses each other, they still find ways to show love.

The film builds on Vargas’s short Que Te Vaya Bonito, Rico (2024), a truncated version of the project that acted as proof of concept. With collaboration from his colleagues from the National Film and Television School and the University of the Arts London, providing an extremely limited budget, the feature film was shot in just 16 days, as a good chunk of the budget went to music licensing. A necessary expense that elevates the uncommon mundanity of riding MTA buses to picturesque moments of bliss, such as when Rico heads to City Island. These moments promote a side of the Bronx many don’t get to see on screen but can identify with intuitive clarity. 

My biggest problem with Mad Bills to Pay is that it implies Rico lives near Crotona Park, as he and Destiny are on the downtown platform of the Freeman St. 2/5 train. Curiously, the film cuts to what appears to be an aboveground 6 train, then cuts to them at Orchard Beach. This would suggest that they took the 5 train to 125th St. to get on the uptown 6 train to Pelham Bay, then took a (summer service) Bx12 to the beach. This perplexes me, as a simpler route would be to take the 2 or 5 train uptown to Pelham Parkway directly to the Bx12. Nonetheless, that is my only slight against this wonderful film.