Y Tu Mama Tambien Review
by Harvey S. Karten (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)February 28th, 2002
Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
IFC Films/ Good Machine Production
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Writer: Alfonso Cuaron, Carlos Cuaron
Cast:Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal, Maribel Verdu
Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 2/27/02
People who know travel, who've been around the world, agree that Mexico is the ideal country for tourism. That one nation enjoys every kind of topography from rains forests to mountains, deserts to ancient ruins. Alfonso Cuaron, previously known to movie fans for his adaptations of Dickens' "Great Expectations" and Frances Hodgsons Burnett's "A Little Princess," is aware of that colorful country's potential for a road movie and a road movie is what we get. Not even five minutes into the story, we could swear that Cuaron was inspired by American teen fare like "Road Trip" and to an extent "Y Tu mama tambien" has the sexuality, the Cheech-and-Chong central characters, the unpredictability. Not to take anything away from the Todd Phillips' feature which showed Tom Green to be one of the funniest Americans alive, "Y tu mama tambien" is richer, more varied, more credible and with some occasional left-wing political resonance. Featured at the New York Film Festival last year in addition to its being bestowed with awards at the Venice Festival, "Y tu mama tambien" is a stunning coming-of age comedy with poignance to spare, a whole philosophy of life spun into a fast-paced tale photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki (Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow") and co-scripted by the director's brother, Carlos Cuaron.
The film opens on two 17-year-olds from opposite sides of the tracks in Mexico City, the rich, fun-loving Tenoch (Diego Luna), whose corrupt politician father is hosting the president of Mexico at what he calls a "humble gathering", and Tenoch's equally fun- loving, lower-middle-class pal Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal). When they're together they seem to come from the lab of a scientist studying hormone overload in teens they bounce off the walls like a pair of Jack Russell Terriers, with girls friends at least as fond as sex as the boys are. When their girls head off to Italy on vacation, the boys meet and flirt with the 28-year-old Luisa (Maribel Verdu). When Luisa's intellectual husband Jano (Juan Carlos Remolina Suarez) telephones Luisa in an intoxicated state and apropos of nothing confesses to an affair, Luisa is determined to get back at him by joining the two teens on a long auto trip to a secluded beach called Boca del Cielo (Heaven's Mouth).
The story, which is stopped in its tracks every so often so that a Godard-style narrator can provide some context, is about alienation, of course. The teens are alienated because that's what teens are supposed to be. Tenoch's father wants his son to follow in his path and urges the boy to major in Economics in college, while Tenoch would prefer to be a writer and take literature. Julio is somewhat out of his element in the capacious surroundings of his rich friend while Luisa, though obviously more mature and somehow hiding a secret about herself, was orphaned at an early age. The three zip around the Mexican countryside connecting with one another, disconnecting and illustrating the deep though unfelt need they have for one another each providing something that had been missing from the lives of the others.
The principal performers would probably be known to patrons of indies such as this one Diego Luna from "Before Night Falls," Gael Garcia Bernal from "Amores Perros" and the noted Spanish performer Maribel Verdu from "Goya en Bordeos" as well as some thirty other films. The trip they take teaches them more about themselves than perhaps they wanted to know. The boys are exposed at one point to the sexual attraction for each other that they'd suppressed during their friendship and the woman to the kind of life she wished she'd have led, free of the intellectual pretensions of her husband's professorial pals. While the sex is upfront in the dialogue and in scenes that could be called close to softcore pornography, the actions are there not simply to push the envelope as is the case in so many of the recent American teen movies.
Audience members with liberal political tendencies will appreciate the digs at globalization, and the contrast between the stiff, posh lives of corrupt businessmen and politicians and the free-and-easy relationships enjoyed by the ordinary people in Mexican villages. While this is not a picture to invite your aunt Beatrice from Idaho to, if you're part of a cool family, you'll enjoy it, y tu mama tambien.
Not Rated. Running time: 105 minutes. (C) 2002 by
Harvey Karten, [email protected]
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