| Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN And Your Mother Too |
 2001 -
Mexico / USADirector: Alfonso Cuarón - Reviewed by Linda
The filmmakers waste no time establishing the style of the film, as the opening scene is an unabashedly graphic view of a couple of randy teenagers having sex in the girl's bedroom. The scene is played for laughs, as in the middle of their wrestling, the boy, Tenoch (Diego Luna), is trying to get his girl to promise that she won't screw around with sexy foreign men when she leaves for a summer jaunt to Europe with her friend. Jump to another scenario of Tenoch's best friend Julio (Gael García Bernal) who is also getting one last fling at his girlfriend's house before she has to go to the airport to join her friend. Once the girlfriends are out of the way, the boys settle into what will undoubtedly be The Last Summer Before Adulthood. They get drunk, masturbate (a LOT), take drugs, and are bored. Then one day they try to pick up a beautiful older woman (well, she's probably 30), and invite her along on an imaginary road trip to an imaginary paradise beach named Heaven's Mouth. Luisa (Maribel Verdú) is gorgeous, slightly sad, and exotically Spanish. She surprises them by calling the next day and taking them up on the offer. Thus begins the real story: the road trip to nowhere—or anywhere—as two excited and flustered horny boys have a saucy woman in their car, as they cockily pretend to know what lies at the end of their journey. What could have easily been a throwaway raunchy comedy manages to cut deeper with the fast, sharp screenplay by director Alfonso Cuarón and his brother Carlos. There are many political overtones and commentaries in the film (much going over my head, because of unfamiliarity with the country's political state). There is a building tension in the friendship between Tenoch (with his upper-class spoiled background) and Julio (who shares a lower-middle class flat with his mother and his left-wing activist sister). Will their friendship last when they graduate to the "real" world? Is their competitiveness darker than just play between friends? The film also throws in an interesting (initially distracting) narrative device, with a voice-over cutting into scenes, explaining in observation the bigger picture of what is going on outside the characters' small world. (Note to director: this would have worked much better with a gentle sound fade... I swear, each time the sound simply cut out for the narration, I thought something was wrong with the film projector.) Y Tu Mamá También works well because of its completely believable stars (much of the banter, between the boys especially, almost seems improv, but apparently it was all very carefully scripted). It works because it is unflinching—realistic in a way that will make you smile, laugh, and often squirm uncomfortably. Plus it stands out as a cultural capsule of modern urban and rural Mexico, a society that is unfortunately not represented in film (with much realism at least) north of the border. If Y Tu Mamá También (and Amores Perros, for that matter) signal a new wave of Mexican cinema, I'll be waiting in line to see more! (Read Tim's negative review of the film.) |
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A rapid-fire, sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad film, Y Tu Mamá También somehow manages to breath fresh air into not only the well-worn road movie, but the teenage sex comedy as well.
