Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN (AND YOUR MOTHER TOO)  ****

Reviewed 3/17/02

Coming from Alfonso Cuarón, director of 1995’s charming A LITTLE PRINCESS and 1998’s messy GREAT EXPECTATIONS, Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN is a very nice surprise.  His previous two Hollywood ventures, however adroit, did not show that he had such a great radical sensibility in him.  In Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN, Cuarón and his co-writing brother, Carlos, cleverly interweave sociopolitical critique of Mexico with a powerful depiction of the personal lives of individuals.

Part coming-of-age comedy, part road picture, and part ménage á trois romp, Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN follows the adventures of seventeen-year olds Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) with “older woman,” twenty-eight year old Luisa (Maribel Verdu).  Tenoch comes from a wealthy family with the kind of political connections that finds them mixing it up with the president of Mexico at a ritzy wedding reception.   Julio’s family, comprised of a single mother and an activist older sister, is much more modest in means.  After seeing their spirited girlfriends, Ana (Ana López Mercado) and Cecilia (María Aura), off on their summer vacation to Italy, Tenoch and Julio remain in Mexico City, hanging out at parties, drinking and doing drugs, talking about girls, swimming, and masturbating.

At the aforementioned wedding reception, the two boys run into Tenoch’s distant cousin, Jano (Juan Carlos Remolina), a writer with some fame, and his attractive Spanish wife, Luisa.  The boys retaliate against Jano’s snobbish condescension towards them by “accidentally” spilling his own drink on him.  While Jano tends to his stained suit, Tenoch and Julio corner Luisa and invite her to the beach.  When she inquires about what they have in mind, they conjure up an imaginary paradise they call Boca del Cielo, or “Heaven’s Mouth.”  Later Jano reveals to Luisa that he has been cheating on her.  Enraged, she leaves him and takes Tenoch and Julio up on their offer to go to this faraway beach.  Though the boys do not know precisely where they are heading, they set out on the road with Luisa, sharing stories about sex with their girlfriends and hoping for sex from the beautiful, older woman.

The Cuaróns vividly capture the lives of these two adolescents, both in their moments of hedonism and ennui.  At a gas station, Julio’s pulling away from a Tenoch trying to return to the car adds just the right degree of playful rapport between them.  Small details like their discussion of a friend named Daniel, who has become seldom seen since coming out of the closet, bestows the impression of a fully-formed world.  To this end, the Cuaróns makes brilliant use of a deadpan narration (voiced by Daniel Giménez Cacho).   The narrator regularly interrupts the normal soundtrack to rattle off information about characters, places, and times (past and future events as well as contemporaneous political proceedings).  Sometimes this information crucially describes the fate of an individual (usually a minor character) and at other times simply notes colorful, idiosyncratic details, the kind not usually found in movies but in literature.  The tone is always matter of fact, but it invokes both tragedy and satire.  This device vastly broadens the world of the story and also works to wonderful comic effect.  A similar device, albeit one that is solely visual, is used in Run Lola Run, but it is much more sophisticated in Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN.

The Cuaróns also makes note of different worlds separated by class.  In one shot, Tenoch, Julio, and Luisa have dinner at a small eatery.  Cuarón’s camera tracks past them (after noting that only Tenoch gives to a poor beggar) into the kitchen area where the women are obviously working class.  The shot though is not one of heavy-handed pity or a depiction of drudgery.  It is of an old woman breaking into a dance while the others cook.  It connotes class consciousness and how other stories go on all the time on the fringes of this one.  In another shot, the camera views what is going on outside Tenoch’s car while the soundtrack monitors the self-obsessed clamoring inside.  A police vehicle passes the car, then aggressively pulls over to men selling goods on the side of the road.  Tenoch, Julio, and Luisa are all completely oblivious to the episode.  They are the apolitical surrounded by the ramifications of the political.

The one element of Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN that will be impossible not to notice is the sex.  The movie is filled with it.  The characters talk about sex incessantly, and if they are not doing it with someone else, then they resort to pleasuring themselves.  Cuarón is mature enough not to have any compunctions about showing full frontal male nudity, and all three leads show daring candidness in dropping their tops and bottoms as called for.  Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN has a refreshingly frank, erotic abandon not found in American movies, and its eroticism is so much more skillfully handled than in the clumsy, forced scenes in late-night pay-cable.  The sex takes neither the form of infantile snickering (AMERICAN PIE) or pretentious posturing (HENRY AND JUNE).  Cuarón maintains a naturalness derived from character development and respectful camera placement that keeps the movie from ever feeling exploitative.  The enormous box office success that Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN achieved in Mexico points out a surprising distinction between Mexican and American audiences – their prudishness.

Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN vibrantly captures all the intricacies of the friendship among these characters with a scathing yet refreshing frankness.  All the while, it remains sensitive to the world around them that informs who they are.  They are rarely cognizant of these relationships to one another and to their environment, but the Cuaróns make sure that we, the viewers, are.  That makes for a great movie.