Y tu mama tambien (2003)

This is one road trip film for the books. Alfonso Cuaron's highly eroticized story of two teenage boys heading to an unknown, unreal paradise turns out to be paradise all along, as the older woman whom they bring with them teaches them lessons of life, love and loss. It is a joyous, passionate and occasionally heartbreaking look at boys being boys in a summer of sexual exploration.

Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna are effortlessly funny as Julio and Tenoch, two best friends who are seemingly joined at the hip. They are two halves of the same whole and Bernal and Luna's relationship as actors definitely has the chemistry to pull off the like-minded way in which the two spend their days. It is an uncomplicated life they lead: drinking, smoking pot, having awkward sex with their girlfriends. They spend their hours in the haze of youth where troubles are only for the troubled.

A chance encounter with Diego's beautiful cousin Luisa (Maribel Verdu), a soon to be divorcee, inspires the two to invite her on a trip to a made-up beach called Heaven's Mouth, an offer Luisa unexpectedly accepts. The boys' motives are obviously to sleep with her while their girlfriends are in Italy, but how serious they are in their pursuits we do not know. Luisa understands why she is there as well, but a major fight with her cheating husband leads her to throw rationality out the window, and brings her to cause indiscretions which toy with the emotions of her travel mates.

I was reminded of the films of Almodovar while watching "Y tu mama tambien", not because of stylistic choices or because of its characters, but because of the way that Cuaron has tackled sex with such an open embrace. Too often what happens in the bedroom is taboo and is tiptoed around in film, with cautious editing and euphemisms to soften the content for the audience. I respect this movie immensely for deciding that it was simply going to be about sex and the many different motivations that inspire it, and declaring that it shall be shown in all its glory. The dialogue is frank, the nudity shown in plentiful amounts. I was embarrassed at realizing I was taken aback at seeing so much male nudity, but by the end of the film the strangeness of it had worn off and I finally understood what a beautiful thing Cuaron did for me.

One can determine the end of the film about fifteen minutes into it. The story is one great inevitability as most road trip movies are, but unlike the others the sense of excitement and unpredictability maintains itself through its entirety. The major surprise was that when the credits rolled and the expected ending had finally come, I had experienced an emotional reaction. Intellectually I knew what was going to happen, I assume Cuaron knew I knew, but he navigated me where I needed to go nonetheless.

There are so many good things to mention in this movie that I feel discussing all of them would cheapen the actual experience of watching it. Amidst its boyish charm it is ultimately about the paradise that is the ignorance of immaturity. Julio and Tenoch go looking for paradise, blissfully unaware that their lives are perfect, and in their contact with Luisa paradise is lost. This very smart movie never lets us forget that there is a greater world outside of Julio's junk car, and that more important decisions need to be made than who gets the worm from the tequila bottle. Although it parades itself as a comedy, in its deepest core it is a forlorn love letter from Cuaron to his innocent younger self, long since dead.

4/4