The big debate about Y Tu Mama Tambien, from director Alfonso Cuarón, seems to be whether it is or is not more than simply a titillating teen sex romp. Certainly this coming-of-age road film is sensual and sometimes downright lewd, but it is somewhat more. Not a whole lot more, but somewhat! It gets additional credit in three respects, in my opinion. First, it is intelligent and funny. Second, it creatively extends the genre of teen films beyond what is currently possible in films coming out of Hollywood. Third, it provides a bit more thematic depth than most films in its genre. None of that changes the obvious reality that its foremost appeal for a mass audience is that some good looking folks are getting nekkid frequently and engaging in some adventuresome carnal activities. There is certainly cause to rejoice that some pretty daring films are now coming out of Mexico, including this one from 2002 and Amores Perros in 2000.

The Story: Two Mexican boys and best friends have just graduated from high school in Mexico City. Tenoch Iturbide (Diego Luna) is the son of wealthy parents and lives in a mansion. His father is the Mexican Secretary of State. His pal Julio Zapata (Gael Garcia Bernal) lives in a modest, middle-class apartment with his mother and sister. The lads are horn dogs driven by thoughts of sex and drugs, living each day as though it was all that mattered. The opening scene finds Tenoch having sex with his girlfriend Ana (Ana Lopez Mercade) in front of a poster for the film, “Harold and Maude.” This tryst is passionate but quick. Next, we cut to Julio, who is having one last quicky with his girlfriend, Cecilia (Maria Aura). The reason for these brief impromptu rendezvous is that the two girls are about to leave for a summer in Italy (apparently, the families of these Mexico City youths have a fair amount of loose change). As they part company, the girls and boys alike promise to be faithful over the summer, none meaning it and but all hoping that their respective partner does. The boys are now foot loose and fancy free and scared to death that they are about to embark on a boring, mediocre summer, instead of the wild summer of sex and drugs, beaches and sunshine that they crave. Getting high and getting laid will do them very nicely and thank you very much! They head over to the pad of their friend Sabo (Andres Almeida) to smoke some joints and then to the pool at Tenoch’s country club, where they masturbate simultaneously, while lying on the diving boards in the vacated pool. They swim naked and race each other across the pool.

Julio is invited to the plush wedding of Tenoch’s sister, where even the President of Mexico will be in attendance. Julio and Tenoch are bored stiff and well on their way to intoxication when they spot an appealing prospect, Luisa Cortés (Maribel Verdú), the sexy Spanish wife of Tenoch’s cousin Jano (Juan Carlos Remolina), who is a college professor and novelist. The boys “accidentally” spill a drink on the insufferable Jano, sending him to clean up, so that they can then brazenly flirt with the gorgeous Luisa. Luisa is 28 years-old and polite but not remotely interested in two transparently horny teen boys. They do their best imitation of sophisticated chatter and invite Luisa to accompany them to a “legendary” beach of their fabrication – the “Heaven’s Mouth.” She, of course, has no intention of going.

The next day, however, a confluence of circumstances changes her mind. Her marriage with Jano is already on the rocks. She returns from a doctor’s appointment and receives a call from her drunken husband, informing her that he is having an affair. She impulsively calls Tenoch and asks if she may still join them for their trip to the beach. Tenoch and Julio are soon alive with anticipation, dreaming the ultimate male fantasy of a long pleasure trip with a delectable and sexy woman. They industriously scrounge a car from Julio’s sister, get some quick but vague directions to a remote beach from the whacked-out Sabo, and have soon arrived at Luisa’s door. Soon, they’re off along dusty scenic back roads on their way to the Oaxacan coast.

As they ride, they talk and get to know one another. The boys talk about their simple manifesto of life: never sleep with a friend’s girl and masturbate daily. The depth of their philosophical views is captured in their motto, “Truth is cool but unattainable.” Luisa is sexually liberated and has her own agenda – to feel vital, desired, and in control. She has her own very adult sexual yearnings that have been largely thwarted by her husband’s inattention. She excites them with explicit questions about their girlfriends, sexual habits, and friendship. She seduces one and, when that causes intolerable jealousy, seduces the other. Despite their masculine bravado, the boys are clueless, lacking in real sexual technique or prowess and hardly fit to satisfy an adult woman. She stuns them with her directness and offers them advice, although not all of it sound (e.g., you can build up resistance to premature ejaculation by not masturbating too often). Jealousy emerges, exposing the fragileness of the boy’s friendship and leading to more damaging announcements of secret betrayals (sleeping with each other’s girlfriend). Nevertheless, they gradually began to incorporate the lessons in love provided by this beautiful and authentic woman, learning, for example, that sex is not a conquest but a shared pleasure. Luisa ultimately leads them into uncharted erotic territory via a ménage a trois, which proves to be somewhat more than their youthful psyches can handle. Having sought carnal knowledge, the lads have acquired, instead, several transcendent lessons in life.

Themes: Beyond the simple but entertaining sexcapades of Y Tu Mama Tambien, there are perhaps three significant themes. The one least removed from the basic sexuality of the story is that horny teen boys don’t make particularly good lovers. It’s not so much a question of simple sexual stamina, but the lack of ease, understanding of what women need, and ability to manage raw emotions, such as jealousy. These boys are just not up to the challenge posed by a stunningly sexy older woman, much less a sex triangle.

The theme furthest removed from the central thrust (no pun intended) of the story is the sociologic issues introduced by Cuarón, specific to Mexico. Clearly Cuarón had something that he wanted to say about his native country in choosing to go to Mexico to make this film. Cuarón lays out for viewers a pretty fair cross-section of class levels of Mexico over the course of the film. Tenoch is from a very wealthy and influential family and lives in a mansion. Julian belongs to the middle class and lives in a modest apartment with his mother and activist sister. The road trip, however, takes place through a rural, lower class Mexico that is impoverished and largely comprised of shanty towns and police checkpoints. In one rural community, they are more or less required to donate money for the local “queen”, a kind of blatant extortion by the penniless peasants. The Mexico shown to us by Cuarón is one where the economic rifts are wide indeed. The economy may be moving ahead, but an army of uneducated, lower class peasants are being left behind. The aimless extravagance of the trek of the three central protagonists contrasts sharply with the hopeless despair of the people in the countryside through which they pass.

A third interesting theme of this film relates to unbridled passions – circumstances in which emotion can be too raw and intense to be effectively sustained. Tenoch and Julio are in this emotional condition in large degree merely by the fact of being hormonal teen boys. Yet, there is an interesting parallel in Luisa’s circumstances that provides the reason that she, even at 28-years of age, has joined in living just for the day. Like the teen years, impending death can motivate a person to engage in flights of impulsivity. Teen years and a time of imminent death share the quality of an uncertain future.

Production Values: Y Tu Mama Tambien uses an interesting voice-over narration, provided by Daniel Gimenez Cacho. Periodically, the soundtrack goes silent, and then, following a short pause, a narrator situated outside of the film’s action comments on what’s happening. The narrator provides a kind of prologue in the beginning, elaborations on the action in the main body of the film, and an epilogue at the end. We are told of events that occurred in the past or the future along a particular stretch of road. We are told that a group of pigs seen escaping from their pen were later consumed and caused a trichinosis epidemic. We learn that a fisherman near the destination beach of our protagonists will have to abandon his livelihood when a luxury hotel is built on the beach, will seek work in the city, but will ultimately return and become a janitor. The narration introduces deeper themes, although these themes lack real integration with the main story. The calm, matter-of-fact manner of speech in the narrative insertions also has the interesting effect, when juxtaposed against the emotionally-charged explicit sexuality, of suggesting that all of these things, the sex included, are just natural parts of life and nothing to get overly worked up over. The narration adds an interesting deeper dimension and contrasts sharply with the clueless mentality of the male protagonists.

The cast for this film was excellent, especially the three leads. Gael Garcia Bernal also appeared in Amores Perros. Bernal and Luna are close friends in real life and their chemistry is clearly evident throughout Y Ti Mama Tambien. Maribel Verdú is the driving force of the film. She is a tantalizing, sexy, and elegant woman, sophisticated and natural at the same time. We used to have a phrase for women of her type that included the word “tease.” She is a great tease – the kind that will always be able to manipulate men effortlessly. We just can’t help ourselves. She appeared in the Academy Award winning Spanish film Belle Epoque. Many of the scenes of Y Tu Mama Tambien were shot unrehearsed and unedited to enhance spontaneity and awkwardness. These young actors and actress deserve a lot of credit for being courageously uninhibited and shameless.

Director Alfonso Cuarón also deserves credit for fearlessness in this film endeavor. He returned to Mexico to make this film largely because the American MPAA rating system together with the commercial demands of the studios severely constrain originality in the American teen film genre. American coming-of-age films tend to be hollow and the sexuality cloaked. Even in Mexico, Cuarón had to battle the Mexican government in court to get his film released because of its graphic sex and language. Cuarón’s effort in this film rehabilitates the genre, to a degree, and for that reason, Y Tu Mama Tambien has importance beyond titillation value even if one ignores or dismisses the deeper themes. Even at the sexual level, Cuarón has created a film that looks more deeply than is typical into the inner motivations and anxieties that underlie sexual experimentation. Prior to Y Tu Mama Tambien, Cuarón made two high-budget Hollywood films, A Little Princess (1995) and Great Expectations (1998). He will be directing the third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban. The script for Y Tu Mama Tambien was written by Alfonso Cuarón and his brother Carlo Cuarón. It is full of rich humor. In its exploration of multilateral sexuality, it is vaguely reminiscent of the 1961 Truffaut film, Jules and Jim.

The camera work for this film was the product of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who has been twice nominated for Academy Awards in the cinematography category (for Little Princess and Sleepy Hollow). He provides many lovely shots of rural Mexico and the remote beach settings. Y Tu Mama Tambien is visually appealing and effectively edited. The soundtrack offers a rich variety of traditional Mexican dance pieces, modern Mexican pop groups, and contemporary and experimental American pop music.

Bottom-Line: Too much of the discussion about this film focuses on whether it is ground-breaking or merely a titillating and graphic sex romp. Certainly, viewers need to be aware going in that this film depicts sexual situations that are more graphic that American R-rated movies (though less explicit than American pornography). There are instances of full frontal nudity, both male and female, intercourse (simulated), oral sex, simultaneous masturbation, and homoeroticism. If any of those words or associated images are a turn-off or violate your moral values, this film will not be to your liking. Y Tu Mama Tambien does touch on some deeper themes, but not to an extent that, by itself, lifts this film into the “ground-breaking” category. What’s more important, in my opinion, is that the film is significantly innovative in taking a deeper than typical look at the psychological dynamics behind the wild and rowdy sexuality that it portrays. It is a film not only of the flesh, but of the human spirit. Y Tu Mama Tambien is both playful and serious in its treatment of sexuality and thereby redefines the possibilities of the teen sex comedy genre. It could not have been made in America because the MPAA rating system in use here stifles this kind of creativity.

Y Tu Mama Tambien is in Spanish with English subtitles, with a running time of 105 minutes. It has no MPAA rating. The DVD version allows one to select between a cut version and the racier unrated version, which includes three extra scenes. The DVD provides an interesting assortment of extras. These include a raunchy audio commentary featuring Cuarón and the two male leads, a twelve minute original short; deleted and cut scenes, cast interviews (in Spanish only), a radio interview with Cuarón, songs from the soundtrack, trailers, TV and radio spots, an awards list, and a poster gallery.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Mexico:

Amores Perros
Like Water For Chocolate
Maria Candelaria
Los Olvidados

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age