Metro Pulse/Movie Guru/Y Tu Mamá También

Movie Guru Rating:
Enlightening (4 out of 5)

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Y Tu Mamá También celebrates life and death and sex

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

The first thing you see in Y Tu Mamá También is two teenagers having sex. Not rough sex, not uncertain sex, not "oh baby oh baby" soft-focus sex, but warm-blooded, good-humored, enthusiastic and slightly absurd sex—the kind of sex a lot of people have, or aspire to have, but that rarely shows up on film.

I think director Alfonso Cuaron's point in kicking off his nimble philosophical drama with such vivid, unabashed lustiness is to disarm the audience for the story that follows. At first, it's a little shocking to see two adolescents going at it so explicitly (for the record, the movie never shows any actual insertion of anything into anywhere, and it proves how little that matters—the sex throughout the film feels much more real than any pornography). But as the camera stays with them, not cutting away as we've come to expect from MPAA-straitjacketed Hollywood editors, their nakedness and copulation become less exceptional, more commonplace. You start to listen to what they're saying to each other, to catch the nuances in their lovers' banter. You realize that, without a camera forever forcing you toward or away from breasts or genitals or buttocks, your gaze naturally drifts toward their faces. And you remember that the allure of sex, its elusive goal, is the promise of connection with another person.

Y Tu Mamá También (which translates as, "And Your Mother, Too") is about a lot of things. In structure, it's a road-trip movie about two Mexican teenage boys and an older Spanish woman going to the beach. In its asides and periodic narrator's voice-overs, it provides historical, political and social context for its characters. But its central theme is the search for connection, or maybe transcendence, and all the messiness that entails; with a tone that rests somewhere between amusement and melancholy, it suggests that the bonds people make with each other and the world are to be treasured despite, and in some ways because of, their inevitable betrayal.

It is also a lot of fun along the way. The two teenage boys are Tenoch (Diego Luna), a wealthy son of a right-wing government official, and his best friend Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal of Amores Perros), who comes from a less affluent and more politically radical family. The boys themselves, who are in the summer before their last year of high school, couldn't care less about politics. Their primary concerns are getting high and getting laid. At the start of the film, their girlfriends leave the country for a long trip to Europe, which Tenoch and Julio see as a free pass to a summer full of flings.

Their first prospective target throws them some curves, literal and figurative. She is Luisa (Maribel Verdu), the wife of Tenoch's older cousin. The three meet at a party, and Luisa says she's always dreamed of visiting Mexico's beaches. The boys promptly make up an imaginary beach and invite Luisa to accompany them to it, never dreaming she'll accept. But she does, for her own purposes—she is having problems with her husband, and a glimpse of a visit to a doctor's office suggests something even more troubling. She doesn't tell the boys any of that; they assume she's just charmed by their puppyish machismo, which is in fact perfectly charming (they seem like 10-year-olds one minute, grown men the next).

From there, inevitable complications ensue as the trio bonds through conversation, food, and eventually much more. The film subtly shifts perspective between all three, so that we ultimately understand each one's relation to the other two.

Throughout, Cuaron (who directed the American films A Little Princess and Great Expectations before returning to Mexico this time around) pauses for sideways glances at his complicated homeland. The film is set in the recent past, a year before Mexico's corrupt ruling party was ousted from power. There are clearly metaphoric elements to the story: the boys, friends across class and party lines, are juggling the hopes and difficulties of Mexico's future; Luisa, the mysterious Spaniard, is a part of the country's receding past, for better and worse. And the rural farmers, Indians, fishermen and other members of the country's poor working classes are a constant reminder of the broader world the characters inhabit. There are elements of a social-liberal agenda—Julio's sister marches in anti-globalization protests, and the faceless narrator periodically comments dryly on the consequences of Mexico's rush to corporatize and capitalize. But the world is a complex place, and Cuaron seems more interested in reminding us of that than in forcing any conclusions.

Then there is the sex, which may be Y Tu Mamá También's most lasting contribution. In recent years, art-house directors in particular have started incorporating ever-more-realistic intercourse in "serious" films. But most sexually explicit dramas seem principally interested in the failures and betrayals of sex, the way people can use it to dominate or hurt each other (e.g. Last Tango in Paris, Romance, Happiness, etc.). Cuaron isn't blind to the problems and vulnerabilities that sex can, literally, lay bare. But unlike his European and American counterparts (there's a sociological essay in there somewhere), he sees the impulse toward sex, the biological and emotional pull of it, as something to be celebrated. As that first scene suggests, sexuality in Cauron's view is a natural and, as long as it lasts, joyous means of expression and connection. There is guilt in Y Tu Mamá, but it doesn't arise from sex itself—it comes from the failure of the rest of life to live up to the promises sex puts forth. The problem is not in our loins, but in ourselves.