Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN
Released: June 8, 2001 (Mexico), March 5, 2002 (US/Canada limited)
It's the highest grossing movie ever in Mexico and it's easy to see why. Combining the traditional road trip movie template with a smart, realistic version of a Hollywood teen movie, "Y Tu Mama Tambien" aka "And Your Mother Too" is a fine entry from Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron. He's braved the Hollywood moviemaking factory in the 90s with the entertaining but financially disappointing "Little Princess" and "Great Expectations" but it took going back to Mexico to make this movie happen. Why? It smacks Hollywood in the face about how you can do a smart teen movie that doesn't reduce itself to "American Pie" levels of unrealistic pap.... It would have almost surely received a triple XXX from the US ratings board people at the MPAA. Sure there's a lot of sexual imagery, but it's REALISTIC. Oddly enough, the MPAA would rather impressionable American teens see Jason Biggs impregnate a pie rather than the more realistic portryal we get here - which involves guys who care all about their orgasms even if it means thirty seconds later their partner remains unfulfilled, infidelity on a grand scale and the resulting sharing of partners after a burst of rage over the aforementioned infidelity. Director Cuaron found three amazing lead actors to live in this Mexican road trip that is more about the emotions of the players than anything on the trip itself, which is simply a frame for the story. Playing the two horny teen guys are Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. They are quite brave in accepting such roles because it involves them exploring the innermost vulnerabilities we naturally try to hide. Playing the slightly older woman (I peg her in her late 20s possibly) is Spanish actress Maribel Verdu. She literally lights the screen on fire with her charisma and moves us with her occasional emotional bleakness. It's not revealed until the very end what she is sad about but it provides the boys with an education they'll not surely forget, even if it means they may not understand it until they're much older - a sad truth of human nature indeed. The director utilizes narration to explain away background details. And detailed they are! On the beach where they pitch their tent, the trio return only to find that escaped farm pigs have devoured and shit on everything. The narration explains, simply by verbally illustrating off camera happenings that may really have nothing to do with the plot, what happens the pigs later on. We find out a dozen or so were later slaughtered by some locals and eaten, resulting in sickness because of a disease in a few of the hogs... Weird details like that, plus the message carried along in the story, makes this a special film. There's brief but realistic time given to truth, friendship, class structure, fidelity, politics, sex and drugs. It's all framed in a picture that's so beautiful - the Mexican countryside. Shot in a way that shows how lovely the scenic beauty of Mexico is, the film also touches on the brutal poverty and lawlessness that tour brouchures never show. It's an ugly world, sometimes dressed up in surface beauty, and the people that populate it are flawed. The message of this film is nothing new - live for the moment - but it's told in a way that resonates with the audience because we sense the realistic snapshots contained here. While I sometimes thought the narration was a little too clever for its own good or even a little too needlessly depressing at points, the message does come through. I'm not saying this movie is any more truthful than "American Pie" - both types of movies ultimately uphold the live for today attitude - but at least "Y Tu Mama Tambien" gives a little credit to the audience by neither dumbing down a situation nor making light of something that can be very real in a person's life. This movie is subtitled.
105 Minutes
IFC Films