Benjamin Bratt Opens NYILFF

For a minute there, it looked as if summer rain would wreak havoc on the event, but then Benjamin Bratt walked up to the New York International Latino Film Festival yesterday afternoon like a big, hot ray of sunshine and not a drop fell from the gray skies. Nope, all the havoc came from the red carpet scene itself outside the School of Visual Arts Theater on 23rd Street and 8th Avenue as La Mission, the film starring Bratt and directed by his brother Peter, opened the festival's 10th-anniversary edition. If you've never been on a red carpet, here's what it felt like: Throngs of cameramen, vapid Barbie doll-nalists carrying microphones, and a lot of waiting.

Then, the first arrivals. Jesse Borrego, who in the movie plays the about-to-come-out gay son of Bratt's macho criminal character, talks sweetly about what an honor it is to have been in the movie and how much he learned from Bratt. Collective awws.

Director/producer Franc. Reyes, wearing trademark bucket hat and cornrows, stops every two feet in front of the microphones. At first, it's not clear why he's here. He's not involved in the movie...is he a castmember's friend? Then, ah, it becomes crystal clear. He repeats, over and over, how "it's great to be here and remember that my movie The Ministers starring John Leguizamo and Harvey Keitel comes out on October 26."

A Japanese actress makes her way down the line. For a minute, she captures lots of attention—she's wearing a kimono, no less. But poor girl, she arrives just before Whoopi Goldberg hits the carpet, so her statements about how "we Japanese are very emotionally repressed, not outwardly passionate like Latinos, but inside we are all the same..." etc., is lost in the wind kicked up by cameras all swiveling in Goldberg's direction.

Now Goldberg is a Barbie doll-slayer. Here to support her co-star on A&E's The Cleaner, she fields stupid question after stupid question: What role do you play in the movie? "I'm not in the movie. I co-star with Benjamin on his show. On TV. It's called The Cleaner." How are you doing, Whoopie? "I don't know. How am I doing?" Have you watched any of Benjamin's movies? "Yes, of course I have." What's your favorite Ben movie? "I don't have a favorite Benjamin movie. I have a favorite Benjamin. He's a fantastic actor and a great friend." What's he like privately? "I don't talk about my friends." She did manage to get in a great message, between the mindless questions. "One day," she said, "there won't be a Latino film festival, a black film festival, an Asian film festival. There will be just a film festival. But until we get there, festivals like the Latino film festival are necessary. They let people know who is out there and give people a chance that wouldn't ordinarily get a chance."

The crowd goes wild: Bratt has arrived, wearing a breezy short-sleeve linen shirt and beige pants, hair tousled, big smile on his lips as he walks arm-in-arm with wife Talisa Soto Bratt (wearing a tiny fuschia dress and gorgeous green orchids in a hair bun) and bro Peter. They're family and look every bit like one as they laugh and kid with reporters. But the true star is of course Bratt himself, who displays astonishing self-possession and Jesus-like calm in the midst of microphones, camera flashes from reporters and fans who are crowding the wide sidewalk and spilling out into the busy street. A fan with big lungs somehow manages to get her voice to rise above it all, yelling "Mr. Bratt! You're great! The Cleaner rocks!" Bratt smiles, answers more questions in a voice so subdued you wonder if the microphones can even pick it up. He waves, walks inside the theater and the gray skies hold.