और तुमहारी माँ भी

From the recent comments on this film board, it's amazing how people can watch this film all the way through and at the end not have any idea what it was about.

This was quite simply one of the best films I've seen in recent years. Using three central characters -- two immature adolescent males and a young woman in crisis -- set in a road-trip situation, it was hardly a road-trip movie. Nor was it an adolescent movie. Nor was it a woman-in-crisis movie. Nor was it about sex. Instead, what starts out with a sizzling but ditzy prologue becomes something much deeper and much more profound as it goes along. By the end I was breathless and somewhat stunned. The character study is amazing. The societal insights are haunting. The shared humanity it exposes is painful at time but ultimately reaffirming and uplifting. These are three of the most memorable, identifiable and completely human characters I've seen on screen in ages. They taught me more about life and the human species than the last ten movies I've seen put together. I'll not soon forget Julio, Tenoch and Luisa and their eye-opening journey to Boca del Cielo.

After watching this movie, I looked at what a few critics had to say about it and I was shocked to see some of them refer to this movie as a "teen sex comedy". Wow, I didn't get that impression at all! Yes, the movie is infused with sex, and the two lead characters are horny teens, and there are quite a few comedic moments, but this is far from a teen sex comedy. It's treatment of the subject matter is real, for one thing, and backdrop of the Mexican countryside (and the director's detached observation's through third-person narration) bring some sobriety to the film. Be warned, though: there is a lot of sex, so not exactly a movie you're going to want to watch with the in-laws.

Before you read any further I would like to strongly suggest that you go see this film. Do not read my review and just go see it. Find out where it's playing and buy yourself a ticket, in fact bring as many of your friends as you can, such as I did, and I promise you will all somehow have enjoyed it in a way films are rarely enjoyed. I do not feel that I will be able to describe exactly what I felt having seen this film, but if you would like to see my effort then read on.

This is the story of 2 teenagers, Tenoch and Julio, best friends their whole lives, which have indulged in many of life's guilty pleasures. We meet them at a point when their respective present girlfriends are leaving to study in Italy, leaving the 2 friends on their own for the summer. In the short time after their departure we see a whole new side of the boys. They masturbate to the thought of Salma Hayek, smoke weed, drink hard, and flirt with another man's wife. She is a beautiful older woman named Luisa at a wedding, who in turn is Tenoch's cousin's wife. They flirt with her and invite her to come with them to the fictional beach Heaven's Mouth. She is of course reluctant, but takes them up on the offer after her husband one night calls her to confess he cheated on her. This is the beginning of the road trip to the non-existent beach that will change their lives.

An unidentified man narrates the entire film, and when he speaks all goes silent in the scenes serving as a moving freeze frame if you will. He speaks the future of the lives we are watching these people interact with, and ultimately you begin to worry what will be of there own future. During this road trip to the fictional beach, all 3 main characters meet new and interesting people in new and interesting parts of Mexico. It makes them ponder life as their own past experiences begin to unravel in their intimate and personal conversations. Not before long the compounded sexual tension between them is in a way relieved, but to mixed consequences. All of the subtle characteristics of jealousy, anger, passion, naivety, become completely real.

These characters are so believably acted, that when you see these actors in interviews or in other films you'll almost feel cheated. Relationships like this simply don't seem like they can be cheated; yet through some form of skill and humanity every element comes together just right, never distracting or deterring you from the story.

Featured are some of the best-shot sex scenes ever (as one of my friends pointed out as a matter of fact). `Y tu Mama Tambien' finds a way of making all of it's moments feel intimate and genuine, yet never in bad taste. Alfonso Cuaron makes it difficult for us to believe what we are seeing at times is only movie, which serves this tale all the more. The shaky `Road Film Style' cinematography used here is perfect in capturing this uncommon, and unbalanced relationship. You are kept on your toes at all times, expecting something or someone to break. The dialogue is fresh and funny, the kind you just know cannot be faked, that in fact somewhere somehow the writer or actors uttered those phrases. I am convinced that a great majority of this film was improvised, whatever the case may be.

This film is obviously more than flesh, more than experimenting youth. Take some of your favorite moments from mediocre mainstream movies like `American Pie 1 and 2' and remove all the slapstick value. You will realize that there is much more there than you ever saw before. That is what I think in small part this film strives to achieve. It succeeds. We can sympathize with theses characters every step of the way, because as we first get to know them you realize that they either are like you, someone you know, knew, or maybe someone you always wished you could be. By the time things begin to happen to these characters you yourself begin to feel part of their journey.

This is an experience many of you won't take part in, and that is the sincere shame. Instead a great majority of people have been walking out of `The Scorpion King' unchallenged and un-entertained. `Y Tu Mama Tambien' offers a true form of escape, one that no blockbuster will dare. It's the lives few of us will ever live, for better or worse. What transcends from the screen to your hearts and minds is as eye opening as anything you'll ever see, and as effecting, if not more, as your own personal life experience. Bold words? Go see it and you tell me.

Note: Please feel free to contact me and share your thoughts on this film or on my review of it.

The two teenage males in this sharply etched film, "Y tu mama tambien," are obsessed with sex and view its pleasures as something akin to joyfully skating across a frozen lake. As the story develops the ice gets thinner and thinner, its incapacity to carry the weight of their fantasies advances faster than their growing inevitable end stop - maturity.

The Mexico of the teenagers and their generally stoned friends is one of affluence and political connectedness. One father belongs to a country club that features one of the biggest private swimming pools I've seen - no film set here (the pool is the scene of a very, ah, unusual depiction of teen horniness). Neither of the lads cares much about the actual political and social issues occurring during their adventures and which are seamlessly integrated into their story. Their futures are a blank to them but a blank untroubled by the need to be concerned or ambitious.

And then arrives the femme fatale, a beautiful, smart but very raunchy just-left-husband gal with whom they take off in a beaten-up old station wagon to find, ostensibly, a secret beach. Of course what the guys have in mind is seduction.

Without a polemical discourse the viewer is carried into the isolation and poverty of much of Mexico as asphalt yields to hard dirt roads leading to barely navigable sand traps. The people they encounter along the way are realized subtly but effectively.

These teens aren't really so likable but they do show occasional promise of growing up, a redeeming feature. This is less a road film than it is a comedy of (very bad) manners. The director and three leading characters have taken raunch to a new and interesting cinematic plane.

While these kids may be a parent's nightmare, they become more complex, and inevitably more insightful, as the film develops. By the end they are very, very different people and in danger of becoming sort of plain vanilla post-teens (whatever the Mexican equivalent of the Japanese "salaryman" is, they may well be launched along that path).

This film is rated "R" but many will wonder how it avoided an "X." Be forewarned. But some of the sex scenes are hilarious - especially if the viewer has ever been a teenager. :)

Cuaron uses voiceovers not so much to explain the story but to quietly show that all lives have "sidebar" events beyond the tale being told, events that can be described in one or two sentences and which illuminate the fullness of a character's journey.

The scenery is gorgeous.

Definitely a different and engrossing story.

This is a very different Mexican film. One in which you can really appreciate the sure hand of director Alfonso Cuaron working at the top of his form with an excellent group of actors, which proves that when someone of this magnitude decides to make a good film about interesting characters in contemporary Mexico, one can expect a fine finished product.

Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron have created people and situations that are very believable. The script is fine. "Y tu mama tambien" is about awakening and about reaching maturity. It's a great Mexican Road movie done with a lot of care.

The Cuarons shows us a slice of life that could happen, not only in that country, but one that is universal. Producers and directors in Mexico should see this film and learn how to do future movies, even though the popular taste runs into the horrible soap operas, popular in Mexican TV. The Cuarons have turned out a magnificent script and have turned away from those popular melodramas that are a staple of the film industry of our neighbor to the South.

Gael Garcia Bernal, who was excellent in Amores Perros, here demonstrates once again what an actor can do, given the right scenario and obviously a lot of freedom to give life to Julio. Diego Luna is also very credible in his portrayal of the son of a rich man on the road to discover himself. Obviously, the underlying theme is that both like each other, but it never comes out, as they both are so closeted and think themselves of being straight in such a macho atmosphere.

Maribel Verdu plays the pivotal role of Luisa. She sees right through the boys, but has to play the part since they are the salvation from her miserable marriage. Here as in other Spanish films, she lets us know she is an actress who likes to take chances. This was the right vehicle for her and she takes advantage of a role that makes her outshine the rest of the cast.

One can only hope more interesting things coming from this director and Mexico's gain is our loss, as it's obvious Mr. Cuaron's incursion into American films have not been as satisfactory as his work here.