Y Tu Mama Tambien

The Institutional Revolutionary Party held power in Mexico for several decades. Little was "revolutionary" about it.  By many accounts, its bereaucracy was riddled with corruption and fraud of many stripes.  The reign ended in 1999 with the rise of Vicente Fox of the National Action Party and a trend toward free trade and privitization.  These events serve as a backdrop, not as foreground, for 2001's Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, a coming of age story that is more explicit and honest than many such tales depicted in movies filmed in El Norte.  But the political events and the landscape it created are quite integral to writer director Afonso Cuaron's film.

At first, it feels as if we're in for another raunchy sex comedy.  Tenoch (Diego Luna), wealthy, and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal), working class, are high school buddies who think about little other than sex and drugs.  They like to challenge each other to swimming races, then masturbate (on separate diving boards) while they dream of Salma Hayek.  They promise their girlfriends, about to depart for a trip to Italy, they will not cheat.  We already know otherwise, and our thoughts are perhaps echoed by other characters about what the ladies will do when they meet Italian men.  Y TU MAMA...establishes early that we will get quite a treatise on fidelity.

You probably already know that the film is largely about a lengthy trip to a faraway beach.  The boys are accompanied by an older woman named Luisa (Maribel Verdu), who is married to one of Tenouch's relatives.  At a wedding, they invite her along for such a trip, but it is only later after her husband admits an infidelity that she accepts the invitation.  By now, the film has gotten a bit more serious, but the concern that we may be in for an updated version of that '80s cable classic LOSIN' IT is large.

The relationship among the trio develops in ways you may expect, but how certain perhaps predictable events occur (and play out) is quite different.  Y TU MAMA...has more in common with European cinema than American, with an eye cast wide on the behavior and social environment of its locale.  Cuaron is very attentive.  His actors are free but certainly directed with instruction to be as realistic as possible.  They fight and love each other and never feel rehearsed.  The teens are shown for the underdeveloped simpletons whose understanding of women might match their grasp on extraterrestrial life.  Luisa is not shown to be a tease or a malicious puppeteer, as a lesser film might've done.  She's a teacher, but not in any trite "movie-ish" fashion.

Curaon has an incredible visual sense, gorgeously lensed by Emmanuel Lubezki.  All the better to capture the landscapes of Mexico, from opulence to ragged poor.

Every so often, the ambient sounds silence to allow an omniscient narrator to comment on the character's (and even landscape's) pasts and futures. Sometimes heartbreaking.  It is one of the few times I've seen such a device actually work, and it really deepens the considerable emotional experience Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN is, especially the quietly devastating finale.  It was a great choice.

You probably also know that the film was controversial for its frank depiction of sexuality.  Some might call it pornographic.  I wouldn't.  Every such scene is depicted honestly and naturally.  These are not acrobats with perfect forms.  Sex can often be awkward and brief, especially for some inexperienced boys like Tenoch and Julio.  Cuaron is not trying to titillate, though doubtless some viewers may experience otherwise.

P.S. - Extra points for the use of Frank Zappa's "A Watermelon in Easter Hay", one of the artist's most otherworldy guitar solos, over the end credits.