May 8, 2002

 

Y Tu Mama Tambien

reviewed by
Jennifer Saylor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To find out more about Y Tu Mama Tambien, please go to ytumamatambien.com.

To read more from Jennifer, please visit her pages on ArtSavant.

From the shocking, explicit first moments of Y Tu Mama Tambien (And Your Mother Too), director Alfonso Cuaron lets us know what kind of movie this is. A teenaged boy and his teenaged girlfriend are having sex, and what we see in those first moments is exactly what we’d see if teenagers’ bedroom doors across the world were opened at inopportune moments - two prone figures humping away. The movie hides nothing, not with the covers or with disingenuous camera angles. This isn’t a porno, the two actors aren’t actually having sex, they’re just simulating it with such ferocious, joyful, healthy verisimilitude that we blush for the dishonesty of films like Porky’s or American Pie. Y Tu Mama Tambien shares more with a film like American Beauty, in that it forces viewers to confront the sexuality of teens, to recognize that they have a sexual nature and are capable of giving and receiving sexual pleasure. Some might flush or giggle or stare at the floor, but this is what real life looks like.

Cuaron, the Mexican-born director of A Little Princess and the 1998 version of Great Expectations that starred Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke, is an established, big-budget director, and for his next project after Expectations, he could have done whatever he wanted. What he wanted was to turn his back on Hollywood and make a defiantly non-commercial film - a Spanish-language coming-of-age movie, shot in Mexico, about two teenaged Mexico City slackers and the older Spanish woman they finagle into taking a beach trip with them.

Y Tu Mama Tambien broke Mexican box-office records and holds the record for the country’s biggest opening ever, even though it encountered ratings difficulties due to its extreme content. If the movie were rated in its stateside showings, it’d surely be hobbled with the dreaded NC-17. But Cuaron wisely chose to let the film play unrated in the U.S., and so, amazingly, it’s showing even here in the conservative South. There’s sex and nudity aplenty in the movie, but what saves it from being just another exploitative sex farce is its unflinching realism and Cuaron’s eye for the humor in the absurd huddlings of real sex, rather than the choreographed, bloodless eroticism of say, Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. It’s near-pornographic in parts, yet so completely un-erotic that it’s more like a rather charmingly graphic documentary of the sexual and social awakening of the male of the species. Y Tu Mama Tambien has heart and playfulness that render most of its sexual content too clumsy or too juvenile to titillate. This is not a movie not about love and maturity, but a rare look at earlier stages of growth, change, sexual power, and friendship - and the grand Latin tradition of seeking and celebrating pleasure.

. Boyish, cocky Tenoch (Diego Luna) is the scion of a powerful political family. His best friend, the skinnier, goofier, less suave Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal of Amores Perros), is the child of a working single mother. The two friends meet Luisa (Maribel Verdu) a guest at a ritzy wedding reception (she’s married to Tenoch’s pompous cousin), and rather ineffectually and humorously attempt to pick her up with tales of their fictitious upcoming visit to a fictitious stretch of paradisical Mexican beach called the "Boca del Cielo" (Heaven´s Mouth). Elegant in a white gown, the sophisticated, untouchable beauty declines the boys’ offer to accompany them - but their horny sweetness charms her enough that when sudden and life-changing events destroy her equilibrium and self-esteem, she heads for the beach in a beat-up Chrysler LeBaron with the two salivating boy-men who can hardly believe their luck.

Bernal and Luna, best friends in real life, starred in the Mexican novela (soap opera) El Abuelo Y Yo as preteens. In their late teens at the time Y Tu Mama was filmed, their ease and affection (and their raw talent as actors) make their early scenes together look like hidden-camera clips of the secret lives of 17-year-old males - smoking pot, planning sexual conquests, drinking until 4 a.m., speaking a secret lingo peppered with expressions and references no one outside their group of friends would understand. The two actors shared the Best Actor prize at the 2001 Venice Film Festival, and they’re outstanding, incredibly brave in roles that require them to break any number of taboos applying to men and particularly to young men. They appear nude, masturbate, have simulated clumsy teenage sex... They’ve allowed themselves to be subjected to any number of profound indignities in the service of their art - and at such a tender age! But they’re so convincing that you’ll find yourself groaning inwardly at the sudden return of many a long-forgotten summer memory from your own salad days, when you were equally ridiculous. The boys’ onscreen friendship sparkles with verisimilitude and richness - like the actors who portray them, the two characters seem to have a past together that reaches years beyond the moments we first meet them.

Instead of being a Hollywood fantasy pandering to base, misguided adult notions about what teenagers do and what they think is funny, this is that rare movie that’s about the actual lives of young people. This doesn’t mean the movie has no fart jokes - it just has fewer fart jokes, and they’re actually funny, in the retarded, irresistible way that only teenagers’ fart jokes can be. Cuaron observed his own 16-year-old son as part of the "research" of creating the movie’s screenplay, and Y Tu Mama Tambien captures, with rare grace, the angst and magic of late adolescence.

As the unlikely trio journeys to the sea, we see that Luisa is hardly the cool, collected intellectual’s wife she first appeared to be - she’s a humble dental hygienist neglected by her husband and ridiculed by his friends. Searching for authenticity and joy, she speaks to the boys as equals, coaxing out their stories. The scenes between Luna and Bernal here hit a height of realism and naturalness rarely seen onscreen - we really do seem to be observers on a country road, overhearing the travel tales of three fellow human beings. The bond between the three deepens, and teeters at the tricky moment of mutating into something more.

Instead of focusing on the two boys and making the objects of their hormonal seethings a parade of faceless females, the main source of their sexual interest and confusion is an older, married woman (significantly related to Tenoch by marriage), who takes a kindly, almost sisterly interest in them. Including a mature female viewpoint to this kind of movie transforms it utterly, deepening its meaning and perspective by injecting it with maturity and sense from within, beautifully juxtaposing the boys’ age-appropriate search for nookie with the woman’s mature search for liberation.

Not only a coming-of-age tale, Y Tu Mama Tambien is filled with unsubtle messages of political struggle and class struggle in the Italian neorealist tradition of movies like The Bicycle Thief. We see the two Mexicos - the relative ease of middle-class Mexico City, and the shantytown Mexico whose residents make Julio’s family look like jet-setters. The film’s nameless narrator periodically interrupts the action to tell us the various fates of tangential players in the drama - Chuy, a third-generation fisherman living on a nature preserve, will soon be kicked off the exotic and beautiful land where he has raised his family, and eventually will be consigned to a janitorial job in the city. Luisa and the boys drive past armed seizures and the sites of riots and barely blink an eye at the sight of dead bodies and drawn firearms. We see families living in one-room wooden shacks and keeping animals in the yard. But the journey ends at the white sands of a beach, and the damaged Luisa at last awakens to her power and potential as a woman and wrests control from her two hormonal companions.

If the ending is darker than the rest of the film, it’s still in keeping with all that we’ve seen before. After the heat of summer comes the chill of autumn, and Y Tu Mama Tambien dares to make a few steps past a magic season, honoring the realism of the movie by showing that every season, no matter how magic, must end. What we’re left with is the rest of our lives.

Jennifer Saylor, May 8, 2002

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