Hallmark - South Beach Love (2021)
An Irish immigrant and a Cuban immigrant walk into a quinceañera and find love.
IMDB: Hallmark → South Beach Love (2021)
Currently available to watch: Hallmark Movies Now; Pluto; Tubi
Is this connected to any holidays?: The poster says Fall Harvest and IMDB tells me it first aired October 9, 2021. That being said, signs of Autumn are very different in Miami than they are in the Northeastern US, which is normally what Hallmark celebrates with this fake, seasonal series of movies. Interesting choice Hallmark.
Synopsis: Sara Kelly is a chef getting ready to cater her niece, Lola’s, fancy quinceañera. The quinces hasn’t happened yet and there is already drama. Lola’s friend and classmate, Teresa Sanchez, is also having a quinceañera the day after Lola, and competitiveness is building between them. Teresa also happens to be the niece of Sara’s ex-boyfriend Tony. Tony is a chef in New York with 1 Michelin star and he will be visiting to cater Teresa’s quinceañera. Teresa’s mother, who was the former best friend of Lola’s mother, has submitted Tony’s catering to some local magazine for publicity and bragging rights.
Tony and Sara see each other again and Tony apologizes for bailing on their life plans to go to culinary school in France . He asks Sara if they can hangout and be friends. The quinces competitiveness between Lola and Teresa heats up and then Sara’s sous chef submits her for the same magazine piece that is covering Tony’s catering. Tony and Sara spend time together cooking and talking and think their families are making too much of these quinces. Then the magazine interviews them both and posts an article altering the answers so that it seems as if Sara and Tony think poorly of each other. Both get their feelings hurt.
Sara bids on a local restaurant that is up for sale. Tony also decides to put a bid on the same restaurant, but wants to run it with Sara. Sara declares that she doesn’t trust Tony not to bail on her again. At the last minute the venue for Lola’s quinces is unusable, so Teresa proposes they share a quinceañera and get their families to reconcile. Everyone comes together to share everything, Tony and Sara cook together, and the two teenagers have a blast. Everyone winds up on the cover of the local magazine. Sara apologizes to Tony for letting the past dictate her decisions. They agree to buy the restaurant together and become partners. We get a little epilogue when, six months later, Sara and Tony are opening their restaurant, Cubish, and they kiss in celebration.
Leads: Taylor Cole plays Sara Kelly and William Levy is Tony Rodriguez.
Other actors who regularly feature in the Hallmark universe?: Taylor Cole is a Hallmark regular, but almost everyone else is new, not just to Hallmark but to TV in general. Almost the whole Rodriguez and Kelly family have only this movie as a credit on IMDB.
PoC characters?: If we are counting Cubans as People of Color, (even the American census isn’t always straightforward on an answer to that question) then Tony Rodriguez and his whole family, Sara’s niece and sister-in-law, and Sara’s sous chef Kevin. Also the dress maker and the DJ for the quinceañera. This is another moment where I am reminded that race is a stupidly made up metric.
LGBTQIA+ characters?: Nary a single one even though this takes place in Miami.
Tropes: Exes to Lovers; The One That Got Away; Estranged Best Friends; Class Issues; Two Mothers Fighting Becomes Two Daughters Fighting; Second Chances; Everything Becomes a Competition; Regretting Past Decisions; Contest Pits Romantic Leads Against Each Other; Shoddy Journalism Creates Misunderstanding; Teens Solve Everything; Female Leads Doesn’t Trust Male Lead; Random Event Location Catastrophe; Everybody Comes Together; Old Animosity Healed; Big Fancy Dance; Kissing Under Fireworks; Epilogue; It Ends With Kissing While Family Watch.
Does this pass the Bechdel test?: Yes, various discussions about family heritage, quince traditions, and Cuban recipes passed down from one generation to another.
Meet cute: Tony and Sara were high school sweethearts that ended badly, so no original Meet Cute. Instead we get the Exes-Bumping-Awkwardly-Into-Each-Other-Cute. Sara and Tony are both food shopping at a market in Little Havana. Sara spots Tony first and tries to duck to avoid him. Predictably she knocks over a bunch of mangoes in her attempts to evade Tony. He hears the falling fruit and her sounds of distress and comes over to help. Sara realizes she can’t avoid the meet, so she turns around and says hello. It is awkward.
Does it seem like the leads actually want to fuck?: Maybe. I definitely buy that they have a history, and I also buy that they want to kiss a lot. This isn’t a Hallmark movie where they don’t kiss until the very last moments, there are multiple kisses here, I just don’t know if it ever reaches a really sexy peak.
Are there any kids in this and are they realistic?: Lola and Teresa, the two teens celebrating their quinceañeras.
What city is this supposed to take place in?: Miami, with a 30 second scene supposedly in New York.
What crazy occupations do the leads have?: Two professional chefs.
Did anyone else notice?: Two weeks in a row where a lot of the usual Hallmark structure isn’t in the movie being discussed. I kind of don’t know what to do with myself when Hallmark skips it’s usual shenanigans.
I don’t need to point out any moments where the female lead gives up her livelihood for the male lead, because she doesn’t. Sara starts out as a chef and winds up as a chef. There is never any discussion of her doing something else and she doesn’t need to give up anything to reach the happily ever after at the end. In fact, she cooks more.
In this movie it’s the male lead, Tony, who realizes he’s unhappy in big ol’ New York City and that he needs to move back to his hometown. In this case his hometown is Miami, so it doesn’t fit the usual big-city-to-small-town trope, but Miami has a smaller population than New York so I guess it works. Plus, Tony is mostly nostalgic for Little Havana which is a small neighborhood in the greater Miami area, so there’s the trope.
Another trope that we don’t have to watch in this movie is the one where the leads broke up and the one who left stupidly justifies their actions. In this movie Tony is apologetic and quickly says that he made a mistake and is sorry for ditching Sara all those years ago. Also Sara doesn’t stretch out the reconciliation by staying angry at Tony. She takes some time to think about his apology and his reasons and then accepts it. Even when the local magazine pitting them against each other pulls some judicious editing to make it seem like they shit talked each other, the conflict gets resolved in a few scenes with some clear communication.
One petty thing I will say is about the supposed shepherd’s pie. In one of the romantic cooking scenes Sara and Tony agree to make a ropa pie, aka a Cuban and Irish fusion of Ropa Vieja and Shepherd’s pie. Only they spend a lot of time making pie dough, but shepherd’s pie is actually made with no bottom crust and mashed potatoes on top. What they actually make is a Ropa Pot Pie, which I am sure could be tasty but is neither Irish nor what they just said they were going to make. Why is it extra irritating when something small like this is half-assed? It would have been so easy to depict making an actual Ropa Vieja Shepherd’s Pie, but they just didn’t.
Lastly, it has to be said that Cubish is a terrible name for a restaurant.
Things that work for me?: Sara and Tony have believable chemistry and neither one gives up their dream for a romantic relationship with the other. Also the whole movie is about Miami, Little Havana specifically and how great it is. Bonus points, the movie appears to have actually been filmed in Florida so that is fun. The location is one more way that this movie seems like it’s trying very hard to be auténtica. There is even the whole thing about how Cubans don’t really make spicy food, culturally. That’s a real little detail about Cuban culture and I appreciate the specificity and attention to detail.
I also really appreciate that they got a real Cuban to play a Cuban. William Levy was born in Havana, Cuba and it is nice to see him playing a Cuban romantic lead surrounded by a (possibly) Cuban family. IMDB doesn’t tell me about the rest of the cast because most of the Cuban characters in this have almost no credits outside of this movie, but they are all Hispanic/Latine in some way so that is nice to see.
Final Thoughts: Rituals of transition are important. Marking and celebrating the shift from childhood to adulthood is a pretty common cultural experience. In the U.S. there are many immigrants brought traditions with them, like Jewish Mitzvahs or Quinceañeras. I guess the Sweet Sixteen celebration is an American equivalent of sorts. Are those still a thing? Certain tax brackets still have coming out or debutante balls these days.
The quinceañera happens in many different Spanish speaking cultures, brought to those cultures by Spanish colonizers and then altered and adjusted as each country mixed its colonial and indigenous cultures. To an outside eye the quinceañera is some mix of religious ritual, debutante ball, and sweet sixteen party. It features very fancy dresses, a formal escort, and choreographed dances. There is candle lighting with family and also a special ritual where each teen is presented with fancy high heel shoes and then passes down a doll to a younger girl in the family or community.
This is all lovely, if increasingly a sign of wealth and status as much as transition ritual, but I also wonder about equivalent rituals for boys. Other than a bar mitzvah, which is both religious and cultural, I can’t think of anything that is similar for boys in either American or Hispanic culture. Boys are just as worthy of marking the shift from childhood to adulthood, but many of these rituals were historically about marriageability more than a pure marking of a particular age or maturity.
Quinceañeras inextricably linked a female reaching maturity with her being available for marriage, because in a world where women were deemed of value only in marriage and motherhood, that is what was celebrated. Boys and men, on the other hand, were allowed to have value outside of their eligibility for domestic life so this ceremony wasn’t necessary. Knowing this imbalance makes me feel bittersweet about this type of celebration. I wish that females could have a transition ritual that wasn’t centered around their fertility and sexual maturity, and I wish those rituals didn’t focus on beauty or wealth. I also wish that males got a ritual celebrating all the things that they go through to become adults.
Stars out of 5: 4.