SUN SCORE

***1/2

Ana Garcia is so smart and beautiful, with the deck so stacked against her, that your heart breaks almost as soon as she steps into view.

For Ana is chubby (the polite term would be full-figured), in a world where thin is decidedly in. She's Hispanic, in a society where that too often means you start at the bottom and pray that things don't get any worse. And she's an angry, difficult teen-ager, in a family that has little time to wrestle with her mood swings.

Patricia Cardoso's Real Women Have Curves is a study in virtue, patience and struggle, the story of a girl struggling to survive in both the world she finds herself living in and the world her aspirations tell her she could achieve. It's a plea not only to accept people for who they are, but to embrace them for it. The result is a terrific film, full of love and compassion and turmoil and Sisyphean struggle, wrapped around an emotional center that's as steadfast as it is unforgiving.

Passionately acted and grittily convincing, Real Women opens with Ana (America Ferrera, barely keeping a lid on a maelstrom of emotions) just weeks away from graduation, a benchmark she finds more frightening than exciting. The good news is that she's done well in high school, and among her biggest supporters is her English teacher, who's decidedly in her corner, to the point where he's willing to pull a few strings at Columbia University and maybe get her admitted.

That would be great for Ana, who desperately wants to escape from L.A. But there's a major, vexing roadblock in the way - her mother.

Carmen Garcia (Lupe Ontiveros) has had it rough. No one's ever given her anything, she's had few opportunities to even try for social or intellectual advancement, and she's pretty much given up. To her, success is getting a job (any job), getting married (to a nice boy, but let's not be picky) and raising a family. Her elder daughter, Estela (Ingrid Oliu), struggles to make ends meet, gamely running a dress factory where she and her workers put in obscenely long hours to make dresses they sell for about 10 bucks, so that big-name stores can then turn around and charge several hundred. It's exploitation at the hands of others, but to mom's eyes, it's honorable, gritty work, far more valuable than this brainy stuff Ana seems to value.

And then there's the problem of Ana's weight. No man is going to want to marry her, Ana's mom keeps pointing out, until she loses weight.

Small wonder that Ana spends most of her time and energy growling at the world.

Based on a play by Josefina Lopez, Real Women Have Curves stares hopelessness right in the face and suggests that love may be the only force that is ultimately stronger. Ana and Carmen are at each other's throats repeatedly, and it's hard not to root for the former while decrying the rigidity of the latter. But Ontiveros, in a sure-handed performance that never lets the audience forget there's a well-meaning heart beating inside her, stands in for any and all nearsighted parents who ever convinced themselves that only they know what is best for their child.

The relationship between Ana and Carmen is frustratingly complicated; they can push each other's buttons like nobody's business, so carefully have they studied their respective strengths and weaknesses. Their fundamental love is never threatened (as proven by a moving scene in which Ana storms out of the shop, only to be pursued by the increasingly frail Carmen). The problem is, neither wants to compromise values she's become convinced are the only way to survive.

At its core, Real Women's message is simple: People need to be seen for who they are, not who we want them to be. It's always a good idea, the movie suggests, to forgive people's limitations, especially if you ever want them to forgive yours.