Y Tu Mamá También, 2001, 105 minutes, Not Rated
There is a moment in the exuberant Mexican film Y Tu Mamá, También (And Your Mother, Too) that’s so spontaneous and perfect that it must have been improvised. Such a small moment, it should really be called a blip, yet it wholly embodies the color, spirit, and vibrancy of this cinematic masterpiece.
The moment is comprised of an old woman in a blue dress, standing in the back of a dingy little restaurant, dancing with as much abandon as her ancient bones can muster. The look on her face betrays a love of life, an embrace of every second. Through her appearance, she seems to be saying from the background: Life is all irony, the best we can do is get caught in its rhythm while we can.
In a film that wastes nothing (not even its background, which depicts a modern day Mexico that’s as full of surprises and contradictions as are the main characters), there is no better character to impart this message. A woman about as old as we can hope to get. A seasoned messenger in a film for people who have grown up, not just older. The screenplay, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (his American Films include 1995’s A Little Princess and 1998’s Great Expectations) and written by his brother, Carlos, is a sexually explicit comedy that’s stunning in the way that it entrusts us with mature subject matter while not confusing intelligence with pretense.
The film’s journey commences when teenage best friends Julio (the beautiful Gael García Bernal, most notably seen infusing Amores Perros with his special brand of jittery sex appeal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna, Bernal’s real life best friend), free for the summer and determined to make the most of their girlfriends’ being away, manage to convince an older, twenty-something woman, Luisa (Maribel Verdú), that they’re going on a trip to a mystical (and made-up) beach and that she should come with them. Luisa agrees for reasons of her own, but horndogs that they are, the boys figure maybe they’ll be able to cop a few feels, so they don’t particularly care what motivates her.
On the road, Julio and Tenoch show Luisa what we’ve already seen – they think they’ve reached manhood, but they’re very far from it. Luisa tries to teach them the fine art of becoming men, but finds she has her work cut out for her. When she tells them it’s important to establish a friendship with a certain intimate part of a woman’s body, one of them seriously asks, “How can I make friends with something that is always hiding from me?”
By the end of their trip, Luisa has indeed been many things to the boys – and their mother, too. Through their relationship with her, they learn astonishing truths about how life can turn on a dime and about their own capacity to turn with it. Whether Julio and Tenoch will use what they’ve learned to fully embrace the dance of life, we’ll never know. M
July 2002
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