Y Tu Mama Tambien Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)April 20th, 2002
Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2002 David N. Butterworth
***1/2 (out of ****)
Put in simple terms, Alfonso Cuarón's "Y Tu Mamá También" ("And Your Mother Too") is a coming-of-age road movie set in Mexico. But this is no simple film. It is, perhaps, one of the most honest depictions of youth, of adolescence approaching adulthood, to have come out of that or any other country. It's totally absorbing from its first frame to its last. Cuarón has impressed before--see his splendid adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's "A Little Princess"--but here he's clearly at the top of his game.
Tenoch and Julio live on opposite sides of the track (the former rich, the latter middle class) but they're not so different, both 17-year-old boys with hormones a plenty and raging all over the place. Preoccupied with sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (but mostly sex), the boys hang around together almost exclusively and, as the movie opens, are seeing their girlfriends off on an Italian vacation ("one for the road," so to speak).
At a family wedding soon afterwards, Tenoch and Julio flirt with Luisa, a woman ten years their senior who's married to Tenoch's cousin, and impulsively invite her along on a road trip to a place that doesn't really exist (a secluded beach they call "Heaven's Mouth"). Having just learned that her husband has cheated on her, Luisa takes the boys' invite as an excellent opportunity to "find herself" (for one thing) and, much to Tenoch and Julio's surprise, accepts their eager invitation.
What follows is a journey--and a movie--filled with laugher, charm, eroticism, self-discovery, sadness, juvenile high jinx, and much more. Cuarón, who also made the Ethan Hawke/Gwyneth Paltrow version of "Great Expectations" on these shores, returns to his roots for this complex tale that juxtaposes the virulent beauty of Mexico with his homeland's seamier side--drug busts, shanty towns, roadside religious solicitations.
Cuarón's camera weaves dramatically, finding his actors who have walked out of frame. For these he has chosen well. Diego Luna and "Amores Perros"'s Gael Garcia Bernal are entirely convincing (and mostly incredible) as the firm friends whose world soon begins to unravel, and Maribel Verdu brings just the right amount of sexual maturity to the pivotal role of Luisa. "Y Tu Mamá También" presents its crushingly honest themes with dollops of good humor and, be warned, an explicitness that you don't see everyday, both in its language and in its sexual situations (perhaps Cuarón deliberately chose not to make a watered-down American version?).
But what makes the film so rewarding is its complexity--the depth of its political convictions, the lush cinematography, the attention to detail, the cleverness of the writing, the boldness of the sex scenes, the inventiveness of its narration (like "Amélie," the film features an effective voiceover, here provided by Daniel Gimenez Cacho, who constantly fills in the gaps, moving the story along when the boys are flagging or slowing it down some when their libidos are working overtime).
Defying convention at every turn, "Y Tu Mamá También" proves, like "Amores Perros" before it, that the Mexican film industry is not only alive and well but perfectly willing to show Hollywood a thing or two about what it takes to make an excellent motion picture.
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David N. Butterworth
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