!VIVA SELENA!

THE QUEEN OF TEJANO WAS MURDERED IN 1995. NOW HOLLYWOOD AND HER FATHER PRESENT THEIR VERSION OF HER LIFE

By Richard Corliss Monday, Mar. 24, 1997

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    To give it a tang in the common consciousness, any new form of pop music needs an emblematic satyr or a martyr. Rock had Elvis; reggae, Bob Marley. Selena was no wild woman, though onstage she zestily displayed her full figure in spangled bustiers. She succeeded in Tejano (a blend of Mexican ranchera, polka, country and pop, Colombian cumbia, even reggae) by projecting an aerobic perkiness--Gloria Estefan tinged with Janet Jackson.

    Her songs, usually written and arranged by her brother Abraham III, are perky too, cheerful rather than soulful. The early ones, with their tinny, Tijuana Brass charts and keyboards that evoke calliopes, are ideal for the fairground or merry-go-round. Later efforts had broader pop inflections; they complement Selena's expert mimicry of everything from Edith Piaf's melodramatic contralto to the coloratura riffs of Mariah Carey. But the sound is still lightly Hispanic; the tunes are infectious fluff. Los Dinos was a band for a fiesta or wedding, where the bride has a sweet last dance with her father.

    Selena's father, known as Abraham to distinguish him from his composer son ("A.B."), was protective and demanding of the budding star. In the film he is portrayed as a short-tempered klutz who would do anything to see his kids make the musical mark that he didn't achieve on his own. Some onlookers believe that Abraham, who served as the film's executive producer, wielded control over it as he did over Selena's life. "The guy has been so adamant about controlling the spin on this," says Joe Nick Patoski, a Texas Monthly writer and author of the acclaimed Selena: Como la Flor. "He's as manipulative as Joe Jackson ever was."

    Quintanilla may wish his kids had had the success of the Jackson 5. But, he says, "I'm not a mean person. I'm just a father who was protecting his children in the music business, which is a vicious business." Moctesuma Esparza, who produced the film with Robert Katz, says Abraham was dogged but malleable. "He didn't want any mention of Yolanda, but we convinced him that the full arc of the story wasn't there without what happened at the end." Says director Nava: "One reason for doing the film was that the fans need catharsis, and if you don't show her death, you can't get that."

    The whole family was involved, providing insights and details. Lopez, who gives a feisty, buoyant performance that could set her on a star path similar to the singer's, moved in with Selena's sister Suzette and got scolded by the singer's mother for bad eating habits. "She told me I was just like Selena"--a reproach that to Lopez was high praise. When Nava finished the script, he read it to the family. "They stopped us many times," Esparza says, "because they were crying so hard."

    The elder Quintanilla confesses that "some days I can cope with it. Other times I have a knot in my throat all day long." He occasionally has dreams of Selena. In one, he sees her sleeping in her bedroom and then she suddenly wakes. "In the dream, I told her, 'We better let the media know you're not dead, because they'll think we played a hoax for the publicity.'"

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