Review of Y Tu Mamá También (2001) by Eduardo C — 30 Jan 2009

As a coming-of-age film (do people REALLY come of age?), "Y Tu Mama También" is decidedly average. As a road film, it is not much better. Thankfully, these are only the two least interesting layers in the film out of the many that compose it.

Beneath the genres, the film is pulsating with life. It is at once a love letter to Mexico, an indictment of its present, an elegy for its past, a not entirely pessimistic peek at its future, an examination of class relations and a portrait of life in an underdeveloped latin american country not just for the wealthy and privileged but for those who surround them, supporting players even in their own lives, unnoticed, unimportant, unloved.

The film's graphic sexuality earned the uncut film an NC-17 rating. While I understand and applaud the film's demythification of sex and its courage in presenting it as raw, frank, silly, messy and blasé as it is (particularly at that age), the film falls into the trap of often using sex merely as a plot device to keep the film moving. Luisa's character, the catalyst for the fateful trip, fucks both our leads for seemingly no apparent reason other than to generate discord among them and to set up the film's climax, a scene which will have repercussions but never feels truly "right". It's not that such an event is unthinkable to these characters, but would it REALLY take place under those specific circumstances? Once we find out, as the film concludes, what Luisa's mindset was during the film, why would she not only take part in, but fully initiate and indirectly convince both of our leads to take part in said event? Yes, she takes on the role of the "teacher", making these boys "grow up", leave their childishness behind and enter manhood, but however the film tries to spin it, this is a role that has been done countless times before and, at its core, isn't it little more than a juvenile sexual fantasy? The sexy, older woman teaching the inexperienced kids a thing or two.

So much of the film is so good that the usage of sex mostly as a plot device really goes against the grain. Not only does the film deserve better than that, but it lessens the emotional impact of the still admittedly poignant closing scenes which are, in many ways, a direct consequence of what transpired in the film's climax.

Mild reservations aside, with this film Alfonso Cuarón proved for the upteenth time that he is far and away one of the best directors working in film right now (the comparisons to Alejandro Gonzales Iñarritu and Guillermo Del Toro, simply because they are friends and mexican, are laughable, as they are nowhere near his league). He has a way with color, and is somehow able to generate magic out of the mundane. His ability to weave a spell over the audience, to generate that specific mood and have it hypnotize the viewer, allowing all of the film's layers to work in succession and conjunction, is nothing short of masterful. Should an adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez's "Cien Años de Soledad" somehow, through some demotic interference, find itself in the works (lets hope not), Cuarón has my vote as the one and only person to whom the job of writing and directing it or any other magic-realist latin american novel (or any latin american novel, period) should be offered.