Review of Y Tu Mamá También (2001) by Scott C — 25 May 2013

There are two themes interwoven by this coming-of-age road trip picture: The fates of its three main characters and the state of modern Mexico. Picaresque and funny, it's a Mexican "Huckleberry Finn" with sex substituting for violence and an old car for a raft.

Julio and Tenoch are in a club--Astral Cowboys they call themselves--as offbeat as anything devised by Tom Sawyer. They are 17 years old with all the mischief, shallowness, and prurience this often entails. Their girlfriends leave for Italy, and they prepare to spend a summer marking time, preparing for a future that will gel in a few years. Tenoch's wealthy father is urging him to study economics when the charismatic boy would prefer literature; Julio's more working class mother would probably be happy to see him gainfully employed.

Their bumming around includes weed-smoking, group sex, parties, dips in a country club pool (where they masturbate on the diving boards in a scene that recalls Fellini's "Amacord"), horseplay, and conversation. Things change at a more upscale party attended by the president of Mexico where they meet a 28 year old women whose marriage is crumbling.

She enjoys their clumsy come-ons and agrees to join them on a trip to a beautiful beach--Heaven's Mouth--which they made up as a sort of in-joke sexual pun. The boys don't believe she'll actually call them, but she does. In order to borrow his sister's car, Tenoch is forced to wade through a left-wing political parade, introducing the theme of turbulent Mexico into a film that had previously remained in the insular world of male adolescence.

Once the trio is on the road--to a beach that doesn't exist--Mexico goes by like a fever dream: beautiful, colorful, hurt, empty. Poverty and police presence on rural roads wake the boys up to a reality different from their own.

The adult male omniscient narrator/voiceover is more omniscient than most: He sees the past and the future, speaking like the voice of God about the land and people before us in the film, telling secrets, telling the real story and counterpointing quite nicely the shallow exuberance of the boys in the car. When he speaks, all else falls silent.

So we learn about accidents that took place on a curve in the road or a proud fisherman becoming a sad janitor.

Seeing Mexico as it really is is part of the boy's coming of age, but so is sexual discovery. They take their turn at clumsy sex with Luisa and wind up jealous with each other. Learning they sampled each other's girlfriends on at least one occasion brings the whole thing to a boil, and Julio and Tenoch argue with Latin bombast. Luisa has a theory that the boys have sexual tension between them, the kind insinuated by their morning skinny-dip in a leaf-cluttered pool lensed beautifully by director Cuaron with turquoise shimmer and unaffected nudity.

The boys and Luisa have secrets that the film's ending will reveal (but I will not). Luisa cements her break-up with her husband across the road trip in melancholy telephone conversations often juxtaposed with the boys' carefree mirth. In one scene she's balling on the phone while they enjoy a vigorous game of fooz ball. Her sadness is deepened by something else, her secret, one only hinted at near the top of the film.

I really must remark that though the film's trio of main characters are listless and lost and that the peasant life it shows is charming but bleak, there are moments of robust joy and sensuality in "Y Tu Mama Tambien." The night scene on the beach that leads to a tequila-fueled menage begins with a dance to a gorgeous ballad picked randomly on a jukebox.

The element of randomness operates with the film's ending too, which isn't pat or neat or sunny but rings true to life and the deep/shallow bonds adolesents forge, formative but fleeting.